The Absolite Chronicles: Book 1: Change
by Hyperjade
Summary: There is a world out there inhabited by creatures called pokemon. When Caleb, a human previously, finds himself within this world without explanation and transformed, he cannot identify these "pokemon". He travels the land with one goal in mind: Home. He must do so with the resistance of foe and friend alike, as he tries to return to his home and his family. ( A PMD story)
1. Chapter One: Pokemon

**Author's Notes**

**Hello, Everyone. This is Hyperjade. **

**This is not the initial message at the beginning of book one of my story. The Absolite chronicles has grown so much since I began this. Book two is nearing the word count that book one ended with, and it is nowhere near completion yet. So, I am going to be reintroducing this series in this A/N. **

**So welcome, everyone. The Absolite Chronicles: Book One: Change. This story started all of my writing that I do today. And looking back on it, it had quite a few errors and other issues. The story itself cannot be edited too much, so occasionally, between work on my more prevalent chapters of the present, I will be working on the critical errors of this story. **

**Welcome, one and all, to book one. I hope you enjoy this story. If you catch it in the middle of the editing progress, absolutely nothing will be different aside from grammar fixing and punctuation fixing. So if it seems alright for a while while you read and then you find that said grammar and punctuation drops in quality, I have not fixed that chapter yet, and intend to. **

**Thank you for being here, reading my work. I encourage you to read on, read this story, and the other stories that I own. My pride and joy in my work is the fact that I have created something that you can enjoy if you wish. And the fact that all of my stories are interconnected with one another is only a fraction of why I love writing. **

**So enjoy the story. Please, review when you finish, and tell me what you have thought of it. It means a lot to me to know how other people like it. Have a nice day, one and all. Welcome... To The Absolute Chronicles. **

**some clarification: italic = thoughts, and bold = emphasis. ...Aside from the bold of the A/Ns. The bold here is for the purposes of easily differentiating the story and the A/Ns. **

* * *

_**The Absolite Chronicles**_

_Book 1: Change_

Chapter 1: Pokemon

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was asleep, I think. I am not exactly sure. I could have woken due to the sudden chill that struck right down to my bones, but it also could have been a dream. I had lain down in my bed; an unkempt item that I have not bothered to wash too well in recent times. My mother helped me with that, prompting me to give her the dirty laundry, including the bed sheets. My mother is kind and generous, as is my father. I love them both very much. Personally, I think they go too easy on me. I do chores, schoolwork, and work for boy scouts in an attempt to get my eagle rank, which I am very close to. But the place I had just woken in was not home. My bed was gone, and the floor was solid, unwelcoming. Many sharp materials seemed to be jutting out of the ground underneath me at different angles. It was curious that I awoke, I thought, as there does not seem to be an alarm clock anywhere near me at the moment. Usually, only a noise like that could get me up in the morning. Yet, five seconds later, I found the source of my line pulling me to the surface of consciousness.

"That", said a voice, "is a terrible place to nap"

I did not react to the new potential source of information. I pretended, in fact, as though I was still asleep. I waited for the new, distinctly female voice to speak again. Perhaps she was responsible? or perhaps she just found me here. The latter, I decided, was more likely considering her comment on how I had found a bad place to "nap". I don't take naps. I _may now, actually_… I _feel terrible. _

This observation struck a chord with me. I searched my physical anatomy for feeling, and got something I had not expected. I was tired, but I was not registering any pain. This did not explain the fact that my shape felt… broken somehow. for one thing, my arms and legs seemed to be the same length. and facing the same direction. Also, they seemed to feel similar in form. I also noted the fact that my legs felt no strain from the position they were facing: straight out.

"Will you wake up anytime soon, or should I force you up?", the voice said pleasantly.

_Force me? Hang on a minute_

I began to feel other things. My head, which I should have paid attention to first really, felt VERY different. There was a weight between my head and the ground, and I took the liberty of shuddering to find out if there was an issue with it. There definitely was. My head was held in place on the ground by something, I just could not figure out what it was. I could not feel my ears, and I felt a weight on my forehead and chest.

"Finally waking up, sleepyhead? You must regret sleeping on your right side now, silly. That horn of yours must be completely buried. What, you fell asleep on the spot or something? You get hit with a hypnosis?"

_Hypnosis? I _thought. Then I registered "sleepyhead", and "silly", and frowned. It took five whole seconds to register what make me shudder again.

_**HORN?!**_

I tried to fight down a previously rare wave of absolute panic, I searched my physical self again. With barely controlled panic I registered what I should have noticed five minutes ago.

_I am not human anymore._

I tried to stop freaking out. Panicking would get me absolutely nowhere, but I dismally failed to calm myself. It was past time to stop collecting information. I had to fix whatever issue caused this change in location **and species. **I tried to scramble up, but I was stuck fast in the ground by my head, specifically a "horn", if that's what it was. I opened my eyes slowly. there, peering down at me, was a very odd dog-like animal with a slightly feline face. It had what looked like a stone in its head, and a very obvious sickle-like growth on the right side of its head. Its claws looked menacing, and it appeared very nimble. I saw a dark shape directly behind it, that, from my angle, was barely visible. A tail of sorts, except it looked like a scythe. A very menacing creature in appearance, and then I noticed its color.

I am not normally affected by color in the act of assessing danger, but the fact that the creature I was looking at had **bright red **skin, and its fur, though clearly white, had some pink as well affected my normal caution. Its eyes were bright blue and rather cute, really. Those eyes looked very innocent, like some puppy you just HAD to pick up because it was so dang cute. Those eyes calmed me, made me think that it was safer.

the animal seemed to be laughing at me. "Do you need help? Or should I keep watching you struggle. Your choice."

Not so innocent. I struggled to get up again and looked rather pitiful in the process. "Some assistance would be nice", I replied, noticing how deep my voice sounded. I was too busy panicking about my recent relocation to notice that this creature had just talked to me. I might have said something more, but the female creature walked over to me, grabbed what was likely my own fur, and yanked me out of the ground. Too hard, actually, as I was sent right over to my left side, smashing into the ground.

_**ow**. _

I now tried to struggle to my feet, only to realize that getting to my feet in this form was not going to happen easily, as I had been human previously, and did not have the instincts to use my now dog-like form properly. The only reason I could get up at all is remembering how my dog at home got up: I rolled onto my belly and pushed myself up. I was now at exactly this creature's eye level and figured I must be the same species as her now. Having been lost in these thoughts, I had failed to recognize the fact that she was still talking.

"-Really, you don't want to just sleep on a bed of sharp crystals like that. You get cut up that way, even with that strange armor on your chest. Oh, look, you are. I think I have something for that. By the way, why are you just sleeping right next to the entrance of the Crystal Crossing mystery dungeon? Here."

At that, she seemed to produce an odd blue fruit out of nowhere. On closer inspection, I saw a bag on her side, not unlike a horse saddlebag. She likely carried things around like that all the time. The fruit looked interesting. I might have called it a massive tomato, but it was blue, and the stem piece it was broken from was much thicker, like a small pumpkin's. At the sight of it, my stomach growled **very **loudly. The female creature heard it loud and clear. Laughing, she pushed the fruit over to me. "Have this Oran berry", she said, "you will want to heal up those cuts before you go anywhere."

"Thank you", I muttered in my new deep voice, unsure of how this could possibly qualify as a berry. realizing my new paws were useless here, I went ahead and ate it dog style. It felt **very **awkward, and I was eating it slowly. I had not realized how hungry I was, and I found that in my haste I had eaten the stem as well. The female said nothing, which must have meant I was not doing anything out of the ordinary. I guess the stems are perfectly edible. The "Oran berry" had a sweet taste, similar to an apple really. My stomach growled again.

"When did you last eat?" the female asked.

"last night, 6:30 pm," I said. "it doesn't make much sense. I am not usually this hungry this soon." suddenly, I noticed how incredibly rude I was being to this kind (uh... person? animal?) who had just got me unstuck from the ground, and simultaneously fed me and healed the small scratches on my right side. "I apologize, I have not asked your name."

"Well, my **name** is Absol," she said, "but if you want it to be easier, you should try to come up with a nickname for me"

Now, this confused me. "A nickname? why can't I just call you Absol?"

Absol laughed at me. "Don't be silly, all Absol have the same name. That's why you should create a nickname for me"

I blinked. "what?". this earned me a laugh from Absol. "Hang on, let me work this out. You are trying to tell me that your name is your **species name**? And **that **is why I need to make a nickname for you.

"Yep," Absol said.

"wouldn't you already have a nickname from your other friends?" I wondered.

She looked down at her feet. "not so easy without friends" she murmured.

_No friends? She seems too nice for that._

"Fine. here we go…". I then realized that I was very bad at making names. Instead, I just pulled a female name from somewhere in my memory. "I will call you Sarah," I said. "Does that work for you?"

"That's a great nickname!" Sarah said "so what should I call you then, Absol? or should I just call you by your **name**?" she was teasing me, and it felt odd the way she did it. The way her eyes never left my face. The manner of which she was speaking.

"Caleb" was all I said.

"As your nickname?"

"As my name," I stated firmly.

Sarah studied me, and again it appeared as though it was more than simple calculation. _She wants something from me_, I thought. I could not figure out what. Sarah laughed again. "Alright, Caleb. Fine. What is it with you? You grow up out of the system or something? What's up with the armor?".

"Something like that" I replied, again only hearing half of what was said until seconds after. I looked down at the 'armor' on my chest, like a large metal plate wrapped around my chest and back. A part of it had a circle carved into it; the very front. In the center of that circle was a small green stone with an image I could not see clearly at my angle. That puzzled me, but I let it go for the moment. Looking over and taking in the large entrance in the wall of crystals. I needed to change the topic. "Where would that go?"

"That entrance goes to crystal crossing," Sarah said. "You don't want anything to do with that place. I already told you what it is." I had not been paying attention at the time, but it sounded important. I would ask for details later. "Come along, **Caleb**, we should get to a safer place. My home is there, and so are the homes of many other Pokemon in the area."

I followed her across the room, starting to pay attention to the fact that the entire cave seemed to be made of beautiful crystals of all sorts of colors. I had a new question in mind:

_What does "Pokemon" mean?_

* * *

**After some overview, I tweaked this first chapter based on fixing errors and in response to some good advice I received for how to fix the first chapter (Thanks, Vryheid!). For all newcomers, welcome to my story, The Absolite Chronicles: Book one: Change. Chapters in the future are longer, and in my opinion, better. Enjoy the story to come, readers! And Thank you all for reading. **


	2. Chapter Two: Crystal Mirror

Chapter 2: Crystal Mirror

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

Sarah is quite the chatterbox, it seems. She repeated to me what crystal crossing was, and what a "mystery dungeon" was, and gave me so much random information that I zoned right out. She may have mentioned the Armour once or twice, and I believe that she thought that the stone in it was some form of treasure. I managed to catch the definition of "Pokemon", and it seems to be a general term for any of these creatures around us. There were a few other Absol the closer to the secret town we got, and we passed other Pokemon too. Big floating ice monster things that looked like a giant head of ice with eyes and black horns on either side. Sarah identified the Pokemon as a Glalie.

I asked: "I notice that all the other Absol are the same color as me. what makes you different?"

"Not sure" she replied. "I was just born this way."

Sarah walked past me, which was easy, because I was still getting used to walking on four legs. I practically had to use all my focus on staying upright on the way here. I still tripped plenty of times. Anyways, she steps in front of me and takes this regal stance. "Do you like it?" she asked.

Well, I did not see that coming. And I wondered again what she was looking for. She seemed to be asking for approval, but doing it in an odd way. I wondered what she could possibly want from me. I went through all the possible answers and chose the one that might halt the car before it turned the corner. "Uh…"

Sarah did not miss a beat. She quickly fell into step with me again. "Anyways," she said, "it's not exactly made me popular around here"

I wondered if I would learn what that meant soon enough.

I did; After a while, we were approached by an Absol. "Is this Absol causing you any problems?" he asked in a similarly deep voice to mine, gesturing to Sarah. "not at all", I said, "in fact, she has been a great asset in leading me here. I am new here, as I am sure you have guessed."

"I certainly did" the Absol said. "And I am questioning her decision to bring you here. why has this… thing wasted your time? You ought to get back home where you are familiar with the terrain."

Okay, I am not the absolute best at figuring people out, but when I hear a member of a community verbally attack someone else right in front of me, there tends to be a problem. My reaction was amplified when I realized that this was only about color. _It's not exactly made me popular around here, _Sarah had said. This Absol had called the person who had just potentially saved my life a **thing. **People do not get away with that around me.

"A thing…" I said, my voice an octave lower. It was already low, and and my words sounded more like a growl, really. "Sarah here has probably saved my life, getting me out of the crystal crossing entrance area unscathed. I woke up there, you know, horn stuck in the ground. Sarah got me out of there. The only **thing **I see is the one judging my friend without any real reason. And as for getting home, that isn't an option right now. Where I fell asleep was a different location than where I woke up. I currently don't know the way home. I also don't know the way **OUT**. The only viable path leads here. But before we go any further, you best explain yourself. I find treatment to others like that absolutely deplorable."

He seemed taken aback by my sudden change of demeanor, almost as if he had never expected anyone to stick up for Sarah, but when he spoke, I realized I was wrong in that conclusion. "You do not know everything about her, yet you stick up for her… should I explain?"

"Something tells me I don't need you to" I growled. "Let me guess: her personality is another of your **justifications **for treating her poorly. do all the other Absol treat her like this?!" I was shouting at him now, dragging the gazes of the other Absol and Glalie in the area. I did not really care, however. "If there is something else I need to know", I said much more softly, "I can ask Sarah. I recommend rethinking the way you treat her in the future, if you ever wish to be known as one who does not act in prejudice ."

I turned to Sarah. "where do you want to take me? I suspect you had plans to visit your home." That is when I noticed that her eyes shone with wonder and delight. I don't think anyone has ever stood up for her before. Again, there was something else there. Deeper. What was it?

"I would like to visit my house", she said, "get you some food and rest. You look tired, by the way."

"The way you look at me, i would think nobody has stood up for you before" i commented, and she looked down at the crystals again. "nobody has" she said. "ever".

We walked (well, stumbled in my case) right past the Absol I had been talking to, who had not said a word since I informed him of his prejudice. He acted, in fact, as though we had just finished a friendly conversation. Prick.

The two of us began our trek through what was now looking like an odd town. Small holes that opened into caverns seemed to serve as homes, though they could not be that comfortable. A type of Pokemon that Sarah identified as a Floatzel scampered into one of the caves, and a splash was heard from within. I thought about that Absol, and his treating Sarah like a freak. "I can't imagine that you have done anything to deserve that distrust and hatred back there" I ventured.

"Yeah, well, I don't look like, act like, or fight like any of the others." she said, almost as if she wanted to change the topic.

"Fight? is that so important?"

"Well, yeah. do you expect to just walk through a mystery dungeon?" she asked. "Those things are everywhere, and you need to get through them to go places. The stronger you are, the easier it is."

Sarah had mentioned the mechanics of mystery dungeons to me, and how they were difficult to get through. Sarah also mentioned that the Pokemon there seem to be almost asleep, attacking everything unaffected by... whatever it is. It seemed cruel to me that these sentient creatures are just milling around there in some form of hypnosis, but Sarah assured me that the as soon as they are defeated, they are knocked out of this stupor.

"So you fight differently. How?" I asked. I immediately regretted it when she opened her mouth and a _jet of fire _cooked everything in the corridor. Luckily for my face and everyone else's, she fired it straight up. unfortunately, I still managed to get singed standing so close to the girl whom I no longer considered safe to be next to. Looking back at my shoulder, I saw the source of the damage: the fur around my left shoulder had been charred black, but I did not seem to be damaged too badly. I wondered how I had even stayed conscious next to such a heat wave.

_The bodies of Pokemon must be significantly more resistant to damage than humans, I _thought. I shuddered, wondering just how durable. Was getting into combat going to cripple me?

"Please warn me next time" I said, looking at the ceiling, hoping it was not in danger of collapse. It seemed fine. "Actually, please warn **everybody **next time".

"Sorry"

We made it to a incredible structure made of glowing crystals. It looked rather like a massive tree, with a thick yellow and blue trunk and red and purple branches and, yes, green crystal leaves. A hollow doorway stood in the center of the base. "My house", Sarah said.

"Impressive." I said. "and extravagant compared to the other homes"

"I made it." she said

"The whole tree?!" I asked, incredulous.

"well, at least the home inside. I was not exactly welcome in my previous home." Sarah said. "I decided to take the most obvious spot in the town mostly in spite."

"it looks beautiful." I said.

she turned her blue eyes on me as we entered the crystal tree. The first thing I noticed was a mirror made of crystals on the side. I walked over to it, almost oblivious to Sarah's gaze. My reflection showed something that I was not supposed to be. An Absol stared back at me from the mirror. red eyes, a vicious looking horn on my head, fur, and when I showed my teeth they were clearly fangs. A blade-like tail that could be used for anything from slicing up fruit to slicing up other Pokemon. When I experimentally tried to move the thing, I found that it could move back and forth, up or down. I was wearing a white metal plate with some form of stone in it like armor. I looked like I was built for combat.

in a quick moment, the wonder of this new location disappeared, and reality set in. If I ever intended on getting back home, I would have to actively search for a way back. I did not belong here. I then thought about Sarah. She had been acting strangely since the instant she met me. Teasing, longing gazes like the one now on me. If I had still been human, I would have paled.

_She has a crush on me! _

I fought down a wave of panic. I could not afford to get in a relationship with this Absol. Yet, she was very hopeful. It would be easy in that state to take things I had said the wrong way, swinging the meanings in her favor. why did I not think this through!?

I made my decision. I did not want to hurt anybody, and I needed to get home. If I got too friendly with anybody, or allowed anyone's love for me to get out of control, they would be destroyed by my departure. I could not do that to Sarah. This meant I needed to dissuade her from loving me.

_Play dumb, Caleb_

"This is a nice home, Sarah."

she smiled at me, (_darn it)_ and walked over to a damaged wooden chest, the only item visible not made out of glowing crystals. Promptly smacking it open with her head, seeming not to be hurt badly, she bent her head in and gently took out a few items. One was an odd bag like her own, except this one had odd markings on it, like a weird writing. Another item was a box within a secondary side pouch, maybe for providing organization when carrying things around. The third was a specific sky-blue berry that she carried directly to me.

"Eat this Rawst berry. You must be hungrier than that, but eat this first. Its bitter, but as long as you avoid the leaves you should be fine." Sarah said, putting it on the ground in front of me. now unconcerned with the fact that I was eating things off the ground, I ate it as quickly as I could to avoid tasting it, but eating without hands or utensils still seemed like a tall order when it came to cleanliness. nevertheless, I finished it off, careful to avoid the leaves. wondering what the purpose of eating such terrible bitter food, I looked at the burn on my shoulder. It vanished without a trace.

"Stronger than an Oran berry, huh?" I asked.

Sarah replied: "Oran berries heal most wounds, but only a little. Rawst berries are specific to burns, and fix them completely.

_Completely? Really?_

"I suppose that those items are also for me, considering you already have them." I guessed.

"Yeah. These should help you carry things easily." she said, picking them up and carrying them over to me. "lets get you set up in gear, then load your packs with food and other items."

"Maybe we should handle breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, whatever time it is first" I said, and my stomach loudly agreed practically on que.

She seemed anxious to leave, but I was not sure why. "well, fine." she said, putting down the equipment. She seemed disappointed in my lack of haste, but then her own stomach growled loudly. I guess that sound was not blocked very well in the Pokemon body. She was startled, and then began laughing. I allowed myself a little smile, and it felt weird. It had been many days since I last smiled. I was always too serious. If I ever got back home, I should try to fix that. But being serious was getting me through this.

"Right," Sarah finally got control over her laughter. "there is a kecleon brothers store practically across from my door."

"I saw a small building" I remembered "but there was nobody at the desk"

"You weren't close enough to see them, Caleb. Even you should know about kecleon stores."

I had no clue whatsoever, but I still led the way out the door and towards the 'empty' shop. I felt silly until two outlines became visible among the merchandise. As I got closer, much more detail was apparent. Two Pokemon stood behind the counter, with a red stripe around their waists. The rest of them was still hard to see. They were basically massive chameleons, constantly colored like their surroundings. One instant later, they became fully visible. They were green (like chameleons are known to be), and were looking right at us.

"My, you're a new face!" he said, and I wondered how he could tell. my image in that mirror almost matched the other Absol I had a 'discussion' with on the way here. I wondered how anyone could tell anyone apart. Kecleon continued: "what would you like from us today?"

It was Sarah who spoke up. "I would like four large apples please, and about 3 pecha berries. I'm getting low on those"

Kecleon complied, while his friend spoke to me "And what would you like, sir?"

I replied: "I'm with her for the moment" I said, gesturing at Sarah. I included 'for the moment' mostly for my benefit.

Kecleon studied me briefly, and I wondered how much he understood. He looked like he wanted to say something. Encouragement? but I was saved by Sarah saying "thank you" to the other kecleon and turning around to leave. I was going to turn around normally, but Sarah had other ideas. She seemed in a hurry, and promptly hooked her horn with mine and forced me into a 180 spin. This directly resulted in me losing my footing and getting a face full of crystals. I stood up, my face looking like I had been attacked by a large, glowing porcupine. I probably did not look so happy.

"Oh, Caleb, i'm sorry" Sarah said, as though she had not recalled my earlier issue with balance.

"Please slow down, Sarah. why are you rushing about so much?" I asked. I realized that if anyone should be rushing, it would be me. Right now I was being counterproductive, telling her to slow down. On the other hand, I don't want another porcupine treatment. So whatever.

"I just…" was all she said for a moment. I waited patiently. "I need to get out of here" she said softly. "permanently. So what if I have a nice house, or a nice room. I don't have a real life here." she noticed my wounds. "Here"

I stiffened as she got in close, but she was just taking a crystal shard in her teeth and pulling it out. The pain there stopped quickly. She seemed to try and send me a message by taking her time and lingering close, but I pretended to be oblivious. After my face was crystal-free, we made our way back to the house to finish all of our packing. Sarah helped me set up the pack, again taking her time and again lingering after she would finish a strap. She had some trouble getting the straps tight around my armour. She looked right into my eyes after all the items were packed away on the both of us. I used the act of testing that I could open the box on my left side to avoid it.

Our stomach's growled at the same time. Loudly.

"Oh" I said, wondering how i could possibly have forgotten about the food.

"Apples" sarah said, walking over to the four fruits sitting on the ground. She looked at me in an expectant way.

"you go ahead and start" I said walking back to the mirror. I pretended that a human still looked back, but I cannot fool myself. Sarah was still waiting for me, like: S_o help me I will find a way to break that barrier of your's. _

I gave up and walked to the apples. Sarah had positioned them so that I would have to face her while we ate. I found another loophole, simply not looking away from my food at all. The apples really filled me up, and tasted many times better than any apples I had at home, even though those were delicious.

I nodded at Sarah and looked at the door. Sarah took a few particularly neat crystals from the structure and added them to her bag. _Of course, I _thought, _her favorite part of this town and everything in it was her beautiful house. S_he had taken one of each color, and wrapped them in the same material her bag was made of.

"Where will we go?" I asked her

"Mostly just **out**," she replied "lets see the sky"

She walked uncomfortably close to me on our way out the door.


	3. Chapter Three: Crystal Star

Chapter 3: Crystal Star

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I walked next to Caleb, noting how he constantly stumbled around. It was almost as if he had never walked before. The guy was just so mysterious, particularly if the topic was about his life before I found him. I almost thought he may have amnesia, but he was too adamant about what happened the night before he woke up at the entrance to Crystal Crossing when defending me from the verbal attack by that other Absol. Caleb really was odd by Pokemon standards. For starter's, the guy was very particular about the fact that his name was Caleb, and that it was not a nickname. Caleb had been rather bleary-eyed when he woke up, but was on full alert now.

I noticed a location that came right before the entrance to Crystal Cave, and I motioned to it. "Lets go in here for a moment"

Caleb obeyed in a manner of not having anything better to do. I was not fooled in the slightest. Problem was, he did not seem to have that much of an interest in me at all. I watched him move into the room. He seemed not to realize how powerful he was. The way his muscles rippled under his fur…

"Sarah…" Caleb said, dragging me back to the surface "what are we doing here?"

"Oh… right" I said. "this is a training ground we can use to teach you some moves."

"Moves…" Caleb echoed. "like your flamethrower? No! Don't use it right now!"

I had almost demonstrated my fire again out of habit, and Caleb would not like being torched again.

"You need to fight your way through the Crystal Cave dungeon with me. To do that, I need to teach you how to use attacks"

Caleb frowned. "you mean Crystal Crossing?"

"No, silly, Crystal Cave" I said. "its an entirely different dungeon right next to Crystal Crossing, and much safer. But we will still have to fight through it. I can teach you how to use Scratch, Bite, and Quick Attack."

"I think that we should start with scratch." said Caleb "that sounds simple."

"I agree" I said "first, channel normal energy into your horn"

Caleb Blinked. "Pardon?"

"Normal-type energy" I explained. "We have many different types of energy in our bodies, and scratch uses normal energy. Allow me to demonstrate"

I walked toward a small rock, building up energy in my horn until it glowed white. I then struck the rock, putting a decent sized crack in it. "one thing different about me is that my special capabilities have been swapped with my physical abilities. I'm unique in that way, as most Absol are much more powerful in their physical capabilities."

"You are telling me that I will do more damage to a rock than you did" Caleb said, and I nodded

Caleb concentrated, but nothing happened. "it isn't building properly" he complained. "What is wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you" I said, winking. "it takes practice to channel energy properly"

Caleb went silent. He closed his eyes. There was a buildup of power in his horn, but instead of glowing white, the energy was dark. I knew what it was, and I wondered where he could have possibly learned that at such a low level. Caleb lunged towards a large rock and annihilated it with Night Slash.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I stood in the rubble of a boulder I had just torn apart. An action that I could never have accomplished as a human. I looked over at Sarah, hoping that that was enough for scratch. She looked completely astonished, and I took that as a good sign.

"How was that?" I asked

"That was not scratch" she replied. "that move was much more powerful."

"Care to elaborate?" I asked

"That move was called Night Slash" Sarah said. "a high level dark type move. And one you could not have possibly learned at your skill level. Your energy should not be nearly powerful enough.

I tried to do it again, but the energy was gone. I felt a little drained. I stumbled a bit and managed to catch myself. Sarah looked worried.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine" I said "just a little tired"

"Now have to build up normal energy. Save your dark energy for bite. night slash clearly sucks up your energy."

I wondered if I really needed to use up dark energy to bite things. I was pretty sure that I could bite things fine, but perhaps there was an added effect. Whatever. I tried searching for energy first, tried focusing on certain points of my body and found some strange energies. There was an almost invisible yet powerful energy in my front claws. A non-mobile energy in my tail, and a huge assortment of energies in my horn. dark powerful energy also ran throughout my body. I could not identify which type was which, but I realized that there were more types of attacks than I could use. I tried to use a less powerful energy, building it into my horn, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a white glow. Much better. Now I leaped forward, intent on taking apart another rock.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I watched Caleb gain a white glow on this horn, and I know he had gotten scratch down, at least at starting it. now Caleb had to aim it properly. He lunged into the air, **and tripped**_. H_is lunge turned onto a painful somersault resulting in a painful crash against a wall. He forgot to turn that energy off, so the wall was pulverized. It partially buried Caleb.

"Caleb!" I ran to him as he scrambled out of the rubble.

"I'm all right…" he said. He actually sounded rather bored, but he sounded bored a lot.

I was **not **bored. "Are you hurt? I have more Oran berries-"

"It's all right, Sarah."

"are you sure? Caleb-"

"I am **all right.**"

he was being a stubborn fool. I could see the damage on his flank and face and legs. But I realized what was happening

_He's pushing me away_

That hurt. That really hurt. his strength and stubbornness had not stopped him from asking for help before. He was always ready to interact until they had left her house. Before they left, he became distant, like he had made some sort of decision.

"Did…" I choked out the words "Did I do something wrong?"

Caleb stopped. He looked at me, right at my eyes. I saw a sadness there. He did not want to hurt me. But those eyes also contained a sort of resolve.

_He has a goal, and he is resigned to what he has to do to get there, _I thought. I thought of him speaking of home, but giving no details. I had assumed that he was from another community of Absol, although I had never heard of such a thing. He had no knowledge of fighting before now. No idea of the mechanics of the world. I thought about a recent story I had heard, of a Pikachu and a Mudkip who together saved time from stopping. It was a nice tale, but what I remembered about it was the Pikachu's ridiculous claim that it had been human prior to being a Pikachu. I looked into Caleb's eye's, and saw a look no Absol ever gives. One of everything. Pain, sorrow, hope, resolve, a small bit of anger, and a small bit of acceptance. The look that can only be given by someone who really cares about everyone, but cannot make the correct decisions to help everyone.

"No, Sarah." Caleb said to me in a kind tone. "You have done nothing wrong. The problem lies with me and the steps I must take to get home. You are not responsible for my frustration, and you do not deserve it. I apologize."

With that, he stood up and looked at another target, this one a small stone hanging from a string. Target practice. Caleb went right up to it, and promptly used bite. His teeth glowed, and elongated a bit, and he shattered the thing easily.

"right then." Caleb said, spitting out chunks of rock. "quick attack"

Next he faced a medium sized boulder.

"Lead with the piece on your head to avoid recoil damage" I told him

He smiled, and enveloped himself in a white energy and shot forward. He ran right through the rock, bashed a couple more, and tripped again. This crash was much more catastrophic, and I was taking out the Oran berries before the dust settled.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

"Right then" I said, taking a last bite of Oran berry. "we best be going now"

"Sure" Sarah agreed, looking toward the entrance in front of us.

My power restored, I walked right in with Sarah at my side. I could use attacks now. I likely would avoid using quick attack until I could stop tripping all over the place, but walking was rapidly becoming habit. It would not be long.

"Once we enter a room" Sarah whispered "the corridor we are in now will vanish, and we will be in the dungeon.

"Right. Okay" I said. Fully prepared for fights now. We were surrounded by beautiful crystals, big and small, any shape you can imagine. This place was truly more beautiful than any place discovered on earth. The entire cave was made of crystals, no bare rock visible at all. We reached the room, and like Sarah told me, the corridor promptly vanished.

We were trapped.

"So we seem to be in a smaller room" Sarah said

"Thanks Sherlock" I muttered

"I thought my name was Sarah" she asked, confused now.

"That is your name" I said "Sherlock is a character from a story. He was a renowned detective who was known for making observations that others could not see. I am employing sarcasm"

"You, sarcasm?" Sarah laughed at me "its not like you to make jokes, Caleb. You feeling sick?"

_Hang on… that is a human expression. Perhaps there has been some influence between the worlds_

I wanted to laugh with her. I really did. It was funny. But I reminded myself that the more I attached myself to this world, the more pain it will cause others when I leave. My expression must have soured, because Sarah seemed to fall deep into thought. I was having thoughts of my own

_If there is influence between the world of Pokemon and the human world, then there has to be a way to cross between them. A portal of sorts. Or a convergence point_

"Caleb?"

"What is it Sarah?" I responded

"you always go quiet for no reason." she said. "I cant help you like that."

help me?

_oh…_

"Sarah… I would like your help. Honest, I would. But some things I have to keep reminding myself of. unpleasant things. And if I let myself forget them, I will lose track of my goal"

"And what exactly is your goal?" Sarah demanded

"Home" was all I said.

Sarah was at a loss for words.

I had to change the topic, and said "lets talk about something else, like the peculiar pile of random things in that corner"

she turned and looked, and at a nod, we walked to it. On our way, we were interrupted by a very angry looking pokemon. There was an issue, it's eyes were clouded and looked almost lifeless. It looked like some form of elephant, but it was my height, though much thicker. It had a type of material in a line from it's trunk to it's tail that looked suspiciously like rubber from a tire. My suspicion was proven correct when it started spinning and driving at me

"Rollout! Caleb, take cover!" Sarah said

I dove to the right immediately to avoid getting steamrolled, and the thing turned around to try to run me over like so many instances of roadkill in my world. I was not the classic deer in the headlights, though. I prepared a scratch attack

"Don't be stupid!" I heard Sarah say

I bolted out of the way again.

"I could have gotten him…" I muttered

"Caleb, you hit that Donphan while it is rolling, you'll get caught and squished, no matter what angle!"

I avoided another Rollout "Thanks Sarah, but what can we do about it?"

"Wait for it to stop!"

"So helpful… when will that happen?"

"How should I know!?" she cried helplessly

We continued dodging the attack. It seemed to go on longer than it should have. Then, after about two minutes, it stopped. It simply stopped attacking, and I yelled "NOW!"

I bolted in with a quick attack and sideswiped it with a scratch at the same time. I managed not to kill myself in the process. My attack was followed by Sarah simply enveloping it in a massive flamethrower. I couldn't even look directly at it. But then, I experienced a terrible moment of blindness as the entire room reflected the fire. I was completely surrounded by the red and yellow swirling around, doing it's best to blind me. Those stupid crystals were awful in this scenario.

In my distraction, I got slammed in the flank, winding me. The light was fading, and now I had a odd pokemon shaped like some dinosaur with a big blue-tipped head and spines. Looking behind me, the Donphan was still standing.

"Stupid me" Sarah said "Donphan is a ground type"

"I guess that means no fire. Sarah, how about this one?"

She replied "Cranidos is a rock type"

"No fire either?" I was worried now

"Nope" was Sarah's reply

"Do you have any other attacks?" I asked desperately

"Weak physical moves"

"It will have to do." I replied. _We are so dead_

I faced Cranidos, while Sarah distracted the Donphan. The battle seemed hopeless, because we had no real moves to affect them. I hoped that bite could affect rocks more than normal types.

Let me tell you, that Cranidos is a speedy sucker. I barely managed to get my teeth in him, and then I barely managed to keep my teeth in my mouth. I was flung about the room, but I was thinking pit bull thoughts. I got the occasional glimpse of sarah, but I was moving too fast to see anything properly. Suddenly, the Cranidos froze. He seemed to be shivering or something. I really did not care. I sunk my teeth in more, and flung **him **around for a bit. I have to say, that felt **really **good. I bashed him into a wall, and let go. He was out cold.

"Right" I said, glancing around in time to see Donphan drop as well.

"Turns out our initial tag-team attack did quite the number on him. I managed to take the donphan out. Oh! Caleb! Your neck!" she finished loudly.

"My-" I began, and then I felt pain erupt on my neck in several places. The cranidos had spikes all over him, and I had stupidly let him make contact with me several times. I realized that it really hurt. "Ow" I finished

"Ooohhh, Oran berries won't do enough good, there! we need something stronger." Sarah said. She then ran to the untouched pile of random things, and pulled out a yellow berry that was about the same size of the oran berry. Sarah put it down in front of me and I quickly ate the thing. it tasted really good, but not specifically like anything I have ever eaten. The pain went away immediately. My neck seemed fine.

"Sitrus berry" she explained. "triple the healing capabilities of a oran berry."

That led me to wonder why Oran berries were used at all, but then I realized that Sitrus berries must be much more rare I pondered her decision not to keep it and simply give me more Oran berries. we found more things in the pile that intrigued me. Two discs that looked like really big computer discs. There were lots of seeds that looked exactly alike, but smelled different. And there were plenty of berries, Rawst berries, Oran berries, berries that looked like cherries, and heart shaped pink berries.

"Those small red ones are Cheri berries, and the pink ones are Pecha berries" Sarah said

_Cheri berries? Seriously? This is more evidence that there is influence between the worlds_

"Pecha berries huh? What do either of these things do?" I asked

"Cheri berries heal paralysis, and Pecha berries heal poison" she answered.

"If i'm paralyzed, how am I supposed to eat the berry?" I asked

"I'll have to feed it to you" Sarah said with a slightly mischievous tone

"Uh…" was all I could say. She was pushing it, going that far with her little messages. I hoped i could get out of this place quickly.

"Lets look at the rest of these seeds. See how they smell different?" she asked

"Not exactly 'see'" I said jokingly "I can smell them fine though"

She gave me an odd look. "What?" I said "You wanted me to joke more"

"The ones that smell like smoke must be avoided at all times" she said "they are 'doom seeds' and will drop your level"

"Level?" I asked

"Sometimes after a battle, you will feel a sudden burst of new power. These bursts are based on how much time you have spent in battle, and the phenomenon is called 'leveling up'" she said "doom seeds lower your level permanently.

"Lets avoid the doom seeds" I said. What situation in evolution could possibly lead to seeds harming those who eat it? The best situation for seeds is to be picked up and deposited somewhere they can grow. This seed was not flying anywhere on it's own; not like that.

"Heal seeds smell like a combination of all the berries we have here: Cheri, Pecha, Rawst. It also has the smell of some berries we don't have. Those are Chesto, which wakes Pokemon up, Aspear, which defrosts Pokemon that are frozen solid, and Persim, which heals confusion.

"So what is-"I said

Sarah interrupted: "confusion is an induced state a Pokemon can suffer where they lose their reasoning, sense of direction, and sense of friend or foe.

"I hate confusion already" I said, and then I smelled the heal seed before sarah put it away in the bag, trying to pin it to memory.

"I have a slight issue with short term memory" I told Sarah "it is difficult for me to remember small things without much experience of them."

"I think I will handle the item checking from now on" Sarah said

the third and fourth seeds were also heal seeds. The last seed was a 'Reviver seed', which apparently completely healed a Pokemon and restored their energy for attacks.

"It only works" Sarah said "if the Pokemon is unconscious, and must be fed by a teammate"

"I fail to see the circumstances where there are restrictions like that" I said.

On to the discs, apparently called Technical Machines, or TM's for short. One was a move called protect, another was a move called vacuum cut. vacuum cut was a special move, and protect was best at protecting people at long range.

"You'd best take both of those" I told Sarah. "I doesn't make any sense for me to learn protect, and you are the long range character of our little team" I knew that what i had said makes sense, but I did wonder how long it was before I got to use a Technical machine, and how useful the move would be.

She raised her eyes, and I thought she would say thanks, but she said "team?"

_Crap. Think of something, Caleb._

"Yeah. A team. I expect we should protect each other as long as we travel together. I don't know how long that will be."

I dodged a bullet there, mentioning that there was a time limit, but she still appeared hopeful.

"Could you help me with these TM's?"she asked

"What do I do?"

"Hold it against my forehead, for about ten seconds"

It felt awkward, but I obliged. I seriously doubted that it took ten seconds, but I did it twice with vacuum cut and protect

"What did it feel like?" I asked

"Like having knowledge of a move just appear in my mind" she replied.

Fun times. "We should move on" I said, "we have spend a lot of time here."

So we continued on. We never found a pile of goodies like that in the dungeon again. We fought many enemies, Golems, Gravelers, Beldums (those things were weird), Riolus (I felt bad about taking down those, they were so small). Shieldons and sevipers were annoying, because of the fact that shieldons could keep their shield-like face towards us at all times, even when I used quick attack (ow) and the amount of times I had been squeezed almost to unconsciousness by a giant poison snake. At one point, at the last staircase, we came across one seviper and one shieldon. Sarah happily discovered that shieldons were steel types with a flamethrower, and I unhappily discovered again the power of the crystals.

"Not nice" I muttered to Sarah, unsuccessfully trying to rub my eyes with my new foreleg.

"LOOK OUT!" was the response before I got hit with a glowing purple tail and smashed into a wall. Sarah tried to use fire, but the Seviper interrupted the attack with odd needles from it's mouth, striking Sarah in the face.

"I forgot to use protect" she said "ow", and i could not believe she could not remember to use an attack that **negated all damage**, like the ultimate shield. I had not even seen it yet.

I noticed she was having trouble breathing, and so was I.

_Poison_

Crap. This poison really hurt, and if nothing was done, we would both be done for. I remembered my bag. I struggled to open the berry pouch and produce two pecha berries, and tossed one to Sarah with difficulty. She caught it in her mouth and ate it whole. Instantly, she seemed to recover.

I tried mine, and discovered my favorite food in the world. Seriously, I don't think I would ever taste something better. It was so sweet and juicy, I almost could not imagine not savoring this amazing food. If the timing was not so bad, I would have spent the next ten minutes nibbling at it. nevertheless, I wolfed it down and recovered from the poison immediately.

"Are you OK Sarah?"

"I'm fine!"

I glared at the Seviper, who was preparing an attack "You are the only thing standing between us and those very important stairs. do you really want to stand there?" it responded by belching out some sort of poisonous haze, which I avoided with quick attack, and lunged towards the big ugly snake, only to slam face first into a big ol' crystal that the seviper had grabbed from the broken wall. I'm pretty sure that my descent was extremely comical, almost cartoon like, sliding down the crystal with my face smashed against it. It hurt so much, I almost fell unconscious. The seviper dropped the crystal, and I noticed that this crystal was absolutely perfect, with a well shaped handle, and the rest of it was of identical width. The thing was a beautiful club. And I was strong enough to hold it, easy, being an Absol now. I surreptitiously ate a few oran berries while pretending to be down for the count. I then picked up my new weapon

"hey, Seviper!" I called from my new position on the field. The thing whipped around really fast with a poison tail, but just hit my new weapon. A very odd thing happened: The crystal seemed to absorb the poisonous attack, and began to glow bright purple. I chose that time to attack with it. The thing did much more damage than my scratch could, crunching up the ground underneath the Seviper. The Seviper simple dropped under the strike, knocked out cold. The purple glow faded from the crystal. I decided to keep it after that, because it seemed able to absorb attacks and then take on the corresponding type and then strike.

"Wow" was all Sarah had to say.

"You know, this thing needs a name. I'm thinking it's gonna stick around." I said "after what these crystals can do with the light of your flame, i'll call this weapon 'Crystal Star'"

"Wow" Sarah said again. I wondered if she was stunned because of my new weapon, or myself attacking that snake without hesitation.

"Lets get out of here" I said, walking to the staircase. Once we went all the way up them, they vanished, and we found ourselves in front of a cave entrance, outside. Everything smelled great, the sun was shining, and some pure white clouds floated around. The landscape was a beach like surface, but not on the water's edge. Instead, we were surrounded by cliffs, with a visible exit down a path to our right, and some tree's were visible. There was no pollution, no stink of poison. Technology was a foreign concept in this world, and despite the fact that I enjoyed video games, it was peaceful and nice. I took a deep breath.

"Shall we follow the path?" I asked Sarah

"Why not" she replied, taking her own deep breath. "I don't see you getting up those cliffs"

"Hold on, now" I said, feigning being hurt.

She smiled, and despite myself, I smiled too.


	4. Chapter Four: Nincada

Chapter 4: Nincada

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

I peeked out from my little burrow, trying to see the cause of the commotion without being seen. I was very good at this, but the hole I dug today to hide in was mistakenly close to a clearing. Two pokemon I had never seen before were chatting together in the clearing. They seemed to be talking about some sort of 'sense'

female: "your horn should allow you to sense your surroundings"

Male: "hold on, now, i've searched my entire system. I found all sorts of type aura's, but I have no inkling of what is around me.

I creeped out a little more to get a better view. The two pokemon were of a odd type that I have not seen before. They look like the same species, but one is bright red, instead of black, and the black one has some form of armour on it, and a massive crystal strapped to it's back. Both had bags on them, and both had different demeanors. The female was clearly the grounded one, while the male fidgeted constantly, moving from foot to foot. The female seemed to be trying to coach the male in something, and the male was failing miserably.

female: "don't search your physical feelings at all. Instead, try not paying attention to anything in your body at all. You should find-"

male: "a mental map of the surroundings and the events forthcoming. Yeah. But it is difficult to let go. I will try."

female: trying is the issue. You are putting energy into not putting energy into anything.

male: thank you for the advice, Sarah

Sarah: no problem, Caleb

Caleb seemed to be doing less focusing. I noticed that he was almost in a trance. "the meadow" Caleb said "it's apparent, like an outline of what's there, but with changes." he tilted his head "a fire to our left" he turned his head "uh… that looks like a fissure…" then, much to my horror, his face turned slowly to me "a Pokemon…"

I turned to scurry down into my hole, but was stopped by a paw on my back. Looking up, I saw the pink one, Sarah. She said "who are you?" she sounded friendly enough, or as friendly as one can be while trapping someone else.

"Nincada" I responded, with fear in my voice.

"nice to meet you, Nincada" Sarah said, and promptly released me. I immediately fled down my little hole.

"it's nearing dark, Sarah" this from Caleb.

"yeah. It is. We have been traveling for a few days. Let's take a rest."

"well-" Caleb began, then seemed to notice the masked exhaustion in his freind. "yeah. Sure, lets rest."

with a slight shock, I realized that Caleb was actually making the decisions, and Sarah was helping him decide them. It also became apparent to me that neither of the Two were willing to leave the immediate area. Sarah scared me even more that Caleb did. When Sarah was asleep, Caleb stopped pretending to be and sat up. He watched the stars, muttering under his breath so low that I could not even pick up the words through vibrations. I crept out of my hole and inched toward Caleb, paying attention this time for the telltale vibrations of walking. I did not want that female to creep up on me again. I approached Caleb until I got almost right next to him. I could hear what he was muttering now.

"every break we take is a wasted chance to get me home…" he said to himself. "I need to respect Sarah's abilities and limitations, but I want to focus on getting home… what should I focus on really?"

"perhaps I can help you decide" I whispered.

in an instant, he had shot to his feet and pulled that monstrous item from his back like a weapon, held next to my face. This whole exchange was silent as night itself.

"I want to help you" I whispered, hoping that would get me out of a painful strike. "my advice is: getting home can wait. Your friend needs attention and rest. Stop and sleep every day. don't rush through everything"

Caleb put the instrument back on his back. "I was transported from my home to a random location by some force." he whispered back "I cannot afford to wait. My family and friends were unaware, and I simply vanished under their noses. They probably think I was kidnapped, or that I ran off. The sooner I get back, the better."

I pondered that. His story made sense. I made an offer that no sensible Nincada should ever make. "i'll go with you" I said. "i'll travel with you for a while, make the trip a little easier."

"are you sure?" his question startled me. I figured that he would want what help he could get. Suddenly, I understood that Caleb knew exactly what would happen if I got anywhere near an enemy. "I will help any way I can" I promised. Caleb studied me for two entire minutes, then said "do what you will. If you are still here when we wake, we will take you with us.

"i'll sleep right underground here." and with that, I used dig and burrowed right underground.

I felt Caleb lay down on the grass and fall asleep quickly. I soon followed suit, after wondering what insanity made me put myself in this situation.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

My dreams in the Mystifying forest were as vivid as reality. I had difficulty deciding what was real for a while, but I was not about to let go of my reality with Caleb. I woke up in a peaceful manner, with Caleb right there, sitting calmly and looking well rested. At some point, he had found a way to get the dirt out of his fur, probably with a river. He was dry however, so it must have been during the night. I got up.

"'Morning, Caleb" I said, letting loose a yawn.

"good morning, Sarah."

Caleb then pushed a small bowl shaped rock towards me, filled with berries of many sorts. "you need to eat"

"thank you" I said tiredly. I was confused as to why he was being so nice to me. I did not seem to be making any progress with his emotions, but here was a bowl of fantastic berries. I started eating, and Caleb turned away to look at the hole that Nincada was sleeping in.

"did you hope that nincada would join us?" I asked.

"I guess I did…" he said, glancing at me. "it does not seem that he remained here. Oh well."

Caleb seemed to be showing more hope than normal, perhaps the mystifying forest was messing with his head too. "do we keep heading southwest?"

Caleb looked into my eyes. "we do" he said.

and we dived into the Mystifying forest.

we had entered another mystery dungeon, this one populated with grass and poison types, as well as some bug types. I informed Caleb of our type weakness to bug, and he was happy to be a little more cautious. Mystifying forest proved no problem at all really. My flamethrower took out any creatures that got in our way, even though dozens of small but powerful pokemon got in their way in every room. This was no cave, and the flamethrower was very effective. Anyone not taken down by flamethrower was quickly struck with Crystal Star, that seemed to absorb any flame that touched it and added to its powers. One downside, the weapon glowed green if it was hit with a grass type move, and became mostly ineffective. There were plenty of times, however, when Crystal Star glowed the lime tinged white of the bug type, and he wiped out everything in a fell swoop. That almost included me once, actually, as I ducked to avoid being crushed by a giant bug crystal.

"watch it" I scolded Caleb

"I apologize" Caleb said

one time, I almost got cut up by a vigoroth, but the fool flew too high and scraped my horn without damaging me in the slightest. I noted that afterward he had three scars on his belly before we defeated him, even though I only have one horn. Caleb made a noncommittal gesture to signal his lack of concern when I told him so, and said "perhaps you were just being affected by the forest again." he almost convinced me, but I decided that I could not have been fooled like that. We cleared the forest easily and walked a road along the water, aiming for the mountain next to the water.

"How are you feeling?" Caleb asked me. "do you need some rest?"

"some rest would be nice" I answered.

we lay by the sea's edge, and then Caleb decided that he would climb a tree bent over the water. He plucked several bunches of bananas, and came back with a box full.

"these can replace apples for a while." he said. And then our stomachs growled again. That kept happening; our stomachs rumbling at the same time. Caleb told me once that it was because we tended to eat at the same time and eat the same food. He asked me if this was a problem

"no, of course not." was my answer then.

we were eating our last apples so that we had an excuse to keep the bananas when I asked the question on my mind ever since the story of the team _Thunderwave_ came to me. I had formulated it specifically to trick him into giving me a straight answer

"you tend to get full after one apple most of the time." I noted

"yeah?" was his reply

"how many could you fit in your stomach back when you were human?

"probably about three and a half" he muttered. Three seconds later he shuddered and then froze, a look of shock on his face mid bite.

Triumphant, I looked him over again. unlike the story of jake the pikachu, Caleb had not lost his memory, and no goal other than home. I understood why he had been so secretive when it came to questions about his past: who would believe him?

_I would_

he raised his head slowly, looking into my eyes. We held that position for minutes. I had no idea what he would possibly say next, if he could say anything.

_I know who you are, Caleb, and I am OK with it. _

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

_How?_

…

_I dont understand. I have not mentioned humanity once! This is not something I can deny. There was no chance of her figuring out who I was on her own! Unless…_

…

_If another human had entered this world at any point, they would likely leave behind a story. If Sarah heard even one…_

_That would be it. There are answers of how to get home somewhere! I have to find this other human. That is my new priority. _

_Home…_

I was then distracted. This distraction was the most humorous of events that I had been ignoring to keep from giving anything away. I stared at the little guy for a long time, with Sarah staring at me. I felt a laugh building in my chest, and I had no chance of holding this back. As I stared at the two of them, I figured, what the hey, I broke a personal record

_Longest running joke I have ever achieved. Ever._

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

All of a sudden, the ever so quiet Caleb burst into a frenzied laughter. He would not stop, and I worried that I had driven him mad right there, but his laughter was clearly one of joy and happiness.

_He's happy that I figured it out, and is discovering it himself. He is glad to be recognized. _

He was still laughing, the laughter increasing in hilarity and mirth.

_Wait… Now his laughter is humorous. What is he laughing at?_

Caleb had started to move for the box of bananas. He plucked one out with his teeth and tossed it over my head, to high to catch without moving, which I did not do.

_Now he's going crazy_

With a sudden jolt, I realized that there had been no sounds of impact of the banana hitting the dust behind me. I whirled around, but there was no banana to be found. Caleb's laughter had been reduced to chuckles as he walked back to the spot he had been in before and sat there. I started to panic.

_What sort of freaky trickery is this? is this a dream? are we still still in the forest?_

Caleb watched me, smiling. Normally his smile lit up the room, but this smile was tantalizing.

_Caleb is making fun of me. Why are you making fun of me?_

"That's enough!" I snapped suddenly at Caleb, whose smile just widened.

I started spinning in circles, trying to find the source of his joke. I was missing something, and it was **killing **me.

Caleb walked to the banana container again and tossed one over my head. Again, there was absolutely no noise whatsoever of it hitting the ground

"Alright, you…" I started. "so help me I will beat you down with your own Crystal Star if you don't tell me what's up!"

Caleb continued to smile, continued to wait.

_Not a word is coming from his mouth. Is he_ _telling me to figure it out for myself?_

I focused intently, and found nothing. I had a flashback to the forest, and my speech to Caleb

"_Don't search your physical feelings at all. Instead, try not paying attention to anything in your body at all."_

"_Trying is the issue. You are putting energy into not putting energy into anything."_

The flashback ended, and I stopped panicking. I let my horn do the work, telling me what had changed. And… on my back was a object that was hard to sense it's full shape because of it's location compared to my horn. i could not even feel it, it must have been so light. It was in a place where I could look all over, even at myself, and not see. A blind spot. It was… a Pokemon!? it was…

Nincada.

Another flashback:

"_Did you hope that Nincada would join us?" I asked. _

"_I guess I did…" he said, glancing at me. "it does not seem that he remained here. Oh well." _

_Son of a_…

I calmed myself, but not before vowing revenge on Caleb for this joke

_Watch your back, Caleb_

"Get off my back, Nincada"

"Okay" came the tiny voice of the Nincada we met at the clearing.

He clambered off of me. He had caught the bananas as they sailed over my head and promptly ate them.

"thanks for feeding me, Caleb, I told you that we Nincada could go without food for a few days, but I had already had a day without food by accident. It's fine, I didn't starve"

"_**Fine?" **_I growled loudly. I hated this. Hated it. What could have led to Caleb doing this?

"Not starving is good" Caleb said. If I had realized that you were hungry, I would have tried to sneak you some food earlier. "

at this point, it dawned on me that I was not actually part of this conversation. Furious, I amended that by generating a weak flamethrower to just cook the fool a bit. "ow" was all Caleb said

He quickly took out a rawst berry, but I cooked it real quick and made it useless. The inside of his mouth got some fire there too. I blasted him again, this time with a bigger wave of fire. He was blackened by this point, and coughing smoke out of his mouth, several patches of hair burned mostly down to fine hairs. Once I was satisfied, I took out my own rawst berry and gave it to him. He ate it slowly, probably because I had burned his mouth. The rawst berry could not even heal him within five seconds. In fact, it took twenty for his burns to heal up.

_Why would you do this to me, Caleb?_

* * *

**Hey guys. I know that this chapter is a little short, but my next chapter will be much longer. feel free to Review this chapter and past chapters as well. Tell me what i can do to improve my work. Thank you all.**

**-Hyperjade**


	5. Chapter Five: Wigglytuff's Guild

Chapter 5: Wigglytuff's Guild

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

We were resting near a massive waterfall, I was partially underground, under a rare point of shade in this new landscape. Sarah sat nearby the entrance, her being the one anxious to go this time. The crazed pyromaniac had been ready to keep moving at all times after the situation where Caleb and I played a joke on her. Caleb, however, was the same as before, except for when he saw Sarah grow tired. H**e **gave the order to rest. Sarah was not at all happy about it, but she regained some of her energy while Caleb focused on editing his Crystal Star. I burrowed underground to his location.

"When will you want to leave?" I asked.

he looked up at the sky, noting that the sun was past noon. "not certain. Sarah is still tired from our most recent trek" he went back to using his horn to affect the shape of his Crystal Star. I noted that the handle Caleb had changed would be much easier for him to grip, and I also noted that he had cut the large part down so that two edges were more blade like, but the rest of it still served as a decent smashing weapon. He finished his work, then placed it on the now bigger holder on his back. The thing was less likely to slip out of that holder now. He picked up the shards of crystal, and put them in a empty part of his bag.

Caleb looked right at me "would you like to keep moving?"

I looked at Sarah, who was now pacing near the entrance. "I don't think what I want is important at the moment. I'm not tired. Sarah seems revitalized. I think that we should make it to a town. I believe that that may satisfy her for the time being.

"so there **are **towns in this world." Caleb said slowly. When Sarah uncovered that he was human, I had tried to wrap my head around it. He did not seem human. Saying that, I realize that I don't know what humans seem like. This character was the only representation of the human race I knew of. He had explained some of it at Sarah's insistence: vast cities, easy travel through machines called cars, the fact that no one human can represent the species easily because no two people are the same. All human's apparently looked different from each other, unless they were identical twins (a phenomenon that Caleb explained as when two humans are 'conceived' and have identical genes.) I don't know the word genes, and I did not understand the context of 'conceived'. Caleb grew uncomfortable when I asked about it, and muttered something about it having to do with human reproduction. That just made me more confused than ever, but I did not press him.

"the town will have a place to rest, and, more importantly, reasons to rest. The sooner we make it the better." I said

I could visibly see him make a decision: he straightens in his sitting position, and his eye's become clearer. "we should go now" he decided. "lets go to town"

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

We walked Quickly. Well, Sarah and I did. Nincada was resting on Crystal Star, which was resting on my back. I had informed Nincada about the peril of sitting on a volatile crystal that could violently destroy whatever it was touching it it got hit with an attack. He had told me that it was safer than being on Sarah again. I wondered if that was true. Sarah was walking alongside me as we walked the grassy plains. I myself had gotten much warier of her since she torched me. It had hurt much more than I had let on. Frankly, I had almost teared up trying to handle the pain all over my body. She must have been **really** angry, because she burned the rawst berry too (and my mouth in the process), and finished with a wave of fire. She gave me her own rawst berry in the end, but geez. I was forced to eat that bitter thing with a burned mouth too.

"do you know how close we are to the town?" I heard Nincada ask

"I don't know, Nincada" I sighed. It was not like him to be forgetful that it was my first time too. Nevertheless, I was not being fair to him

"i'm sorry Nincada" I said. "i'm a bit sleepy at the moment"

"it's all right" he said "I forgot"

now Sarah spoke up "I don't know where the town is either…"

I used some human logic to try and solve a pokemon problem, which could have been a mistake, but it was what I had. "the town should have to be built near water. It needs a position where it is easy to obtain goods from other places. When we get close, there should be an actual road leading right to it. We need to find that road. Nincada?"

"yes?" he replied

"do you know the name of this town?"

"not sure, but it may be Treasure Town."

"thank you, Nincada. We will look for any sign saying 'treasure town'"

"signs?" this from Sarah.

well, that shattered my logic. "oh..." then I said: "I don't know if they are around, but they are basically markers with words on them describing directions, locations, warnings, and about a dozen other uses."

"I see" Sarah said, definite anger in her voice.

I looked at Sarah, wondering why she was still so hostile. I played one joke in her. Okay, it was a big joke, and I had acted like an ass, but it was unlike her to hold a grudge.

"that needs to stop" I said to her

she looked at me, looking somewhat confused. "what does"

"you are harboring a grudge on me because of a joke" I said. "at least tell me why you can't let this go like other issues."

"you…" she began, and then she looked away.

this action troubled me. I knew that she had a crush on me since the day she woke me up here, but I did not share those feelings. She seemed to take random things I said and redefine them in her mind to make it sound like I was flirting or agreeing with her feelings. It was naive hope, and deep down she knew it. Nevertheless, I had senselessly obliterated that hope with my insensitivity

_You betrayed me _was what she was going to say. And she was right. regardless, I needed to stop trying to fix the issue. I had planned to separate myself from her fantasies so that I could depart without causing pain. That was possible now, but I needed to repair the relationship enough so that we could act as a team in battles. It was tightrope, and I feared that I was not good enough to balance on it.

"yeah." I said "I did. But that is not the important part. We still need to act as a team. What I have done to you does not matter in that sense. You can do what you want when we arrive in Treasure Town.

she looked at me, and I purposely avoided her gaze. She could have said something to the tune of "i'm sorry", or she could have torched me again. She did not do either, mostly because Nincada spoke up "what is that line of dirt there?" I looked at the area in question, and it did look like a dirt road stretching into the plains.

"that would be what we are looking for" I said "let's go"

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

_Why did he keep stopping me? I don't understand. _

I wanted to move quickly, but after those jerks played their little joke, they seemed intent on resting. Caleb would keep checking on me, as if I cared. As if he cared. And if I seemed even a little tired, he called a break.

_I don't need a break! _

We walked down a trail now, heading for some interesting terrain with the water backing it and to the side. We approached a beach, and there seemed to be a commotion above the cliff. No, **in **the cliff. The cliff face above us was literally a face: shaped into the shape of a Sharpedo. Some noise of conflict was coming from within the mouth.

Caleb spoke up. "That doesn't sound good"

"thanks, Sherlock" I muttered.

"perhaps we should check on it?" Caleb asked

Then, basically on Que, a powerful blast of lightning lit up the world. Originating from the mouth of the Sharpedo cliff, it launched three figures out and into the water below. Two of them floated up, unconscious. They floated to the edge of the water, and me and Caleb pulled them out. The third was still conscious, splashing his way to the edge. It was a skuntank, known for having a tendency for misbehavior. You want to be careful around them. He walked over to us. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, then saw his friends.

"i'll be taking those two with me" the Skuntank said, roughly pushing his way past us, and trying to wake up his friends by smacking them around.

"get up, you two" he grunted

I really wished Caleb had not decided to speak up right when he did. "that won't help them when they are already unconscious" he said "you might as well just carry them"

The much bigger pokemon turned his backside to Caleb. "...shut up" he said, before blasting him with the most disgusting smelling cloud I had ever experienced. Caleb took the full brunt of the attack, dropping. Nincada scrambled off before he could be hit, too. The Skuntank laughed "Chaw-haw-haw" (_what a stupid laugh!)_ before grabbing his friends and walking away. I had not done a thing to stop him.

I was just running to Caleb when I realized that Crystal Star was already sucking up the poisonous gas, and starting to glow purple. Nincada scrambled away, but I made the mistake of trying to help Caleb. Crystal Star's energy expanded in a poisonous wave of energy, causing quite the issue when it touched me. Caleb appeared unharmed. Nincada was fine too, which was odd, but I was very badly poisoned. I did not even have the strength to get a pecha berry. As I fell into unconscious, I said "Nincada… help…"

I blacked out.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I woke to a pleasant chiming. I felt relatively OK, considering what had happened.

_that asshole took me out with a fart!_

I kept my eyes closed, because I could tell that I was in a different place. I heard commotion again, but it was certainly not fighting. The conversation was mostly questions.

"what happened to him?!" said a female voice

"who did it?" said a slow, low voice

"you don't see that many Absol around here." said a small voice

"only place I have heard of Absols appearing is Crystal Crossing" said a high pitched female voice

"YA THINK HE'S FROM THERE!?" a ridiculously loud voice said

"I bet he's from there! yup yup!" said a goofy sounding voice

"perhaps Azelf know's him" said an indescribable voice.

"he look's bad" said an average male voice

"He was very badly poisoned by an attack" said a voice directly behind me. "I have already cured the poison. He just needs to recover now"

there were more questions, but one voice called out above the others. A singsong voice, like if a small bird learned to talk

"everyone, please" the person said "he cannot be surrounded by you lot when he wakes up! you will simply stress him out. return to your duties"

_too late for that, bird. _

sounds of many different size feet walking away filled my ears. I heard loud footsteps headed my way.

"will he be all right, Chatot?" said a high pitched female voice.

"yes, guildmaster, sir, he just needs rest" said the singsong voice. I guess her name is Chatot

"please take him to team Thunderwave's old room, where he can wake up privately" said the guildmaster. I also figured that I was at a guild of some sort.

_where are Sarah and Nincada?_

"I can't take him there, guildmaster, my psychic is ineffective" said the voice behind me. Her voice was like a wind chime had learned to speak.

_Ineffective __psychic powers huh? you new to this or something?_

"then i'll take him." said the guildmaster. "anything for a friend!"

Strong arms picked me up. I was carried into some room, and laid on my left side in a bed of… hay? I heard a door shut, and then nothing. I opened my eyes immediately. I was in fact on a bed of hay, which did not seem very fitting to me. I got up quietly and took inventory. My pack was on, and all items were in their correct locations, even though they carried a lingering smell of that awful attack. Crystal Star was missing, which I was not happy about. I figured I would get it back when I made my consciousness known. I hoped I would get it back. I had made the thing myself, and I was quite fond of it. It's holder was still in place, and appeared untouched.

_neither Sarah nor Nincada were mentioned. I hope they got away_

there was a window in the wall, and I walked to it. The ocean was visible, but that was about it. It was built so that I could not see directly sideways out of it. There were two beds, which must have meant that team Thunderwave had two people. They had not been slept in recently. Otherwise, the room was empty. I would have to leave to achieve anything. My stomach growled again. I hate how quickly my stomach empties. Nothing about how my body works makes sense. As much as I understand it, a Pokemon's body is so incredibly efficient that I use all of the food I eat. And some other things too. There are no organs for expelling waste because there is no waste. I had gotten attacked by a pokemon called Marshtomp on our way to the mystifying forest. The jerk had forced mud down my throat, and the only repercussion was that I tired out faster for the next ten miles. I understood why Nincada was confused about human reproduction, seeing as pokemon don't seem to have any reproductive organs at all. We just ate, and then our belly empties over time. I guessed that the food simply replaced lost energy in combat, and fuelled basic motor control. The more I worked, the hungrier I got.

_I am getting sidetracked. Right now I ought to be doing some sneaking around_

I walked to the door, and just pushed it open. No handle or anything. I was glad the door was quite silent, as if I planned to learn some things before people knew I was awake. I wanted my questions answered first, and then I would let them ask questions. I tried to be stealthy, but the corridor opened straight into a main room occupied by many different Pokemon. I moved back, hoping no one saw me. Across the room, an odd pokemon with bulging cheek pouches stirred a large cauldron with a purple liquid. He saw me, and looked at the crowd around the corner, then back at me. He moved very slowly. I shook my head. He nodded and went back to stirring the cauldron.

_did he understand me? I hope I haven't made some sort of deal there. _

also across the room was another corridor, this one smelled of food. I was tempted for a bit before I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. I listened at the corner to the many conversations in the room, before realizing that none of them had anything to do with me. I glanced around again quickly, and saw a window showing the outside of the guild. There was also one ladder leading up to another level. A door with torches on either side, and looked rather elegant. I assumed that this was the guildmaster's room. No other exits were visible. We were built into a cliff, if I had to guess. And I would need to go up a ladder to get to the next floor, something I did not know how to do in Absol form. The ladder was covered in holes and indentations, as if it was the guild's scratching post. I guessed I would have to walk right up it with my claws. I would fail the first time. There was no sneaking out of this building.

_I will have to make my presence known to get out of here_

perhaps there was something in the guildmaster's quarters. Another exit. Crystal Star. Something useful. Most of the Pokemon seemed to be leaving the chamber via the ladder, and there were only a few left in the room. A birdlike pokemon pushed open the guildmaster's door, jabbered at two others who seemed to be quarreling, and all three of them left the room. The bird's voice matched the voice I heard talking to the guildmaster. Chatot seemed to be the right-hand man of the guildmaster. I saw my chance when only three were in the room, all looking away. using quick attack, I shot across the room and right through the door as quietly as possible. I caught my breath, because there were a lot of things in this room. Crystal Star was one of them, propped up against the wall. I replaced it on my back. Nobody was here, but there was a lot of energy in the room. I searched the room with my horn, and it felt like the room was detonating over and over. Like something kept exploding in it over time. I hoped that the volatile trigger in question was not in this room now. I also hoped that the volatile trigger was not Crystal Star. That whole situation scared me a bit. Satisfied by this find, I surreptitiously opened the door, and zipped back to my new room when the coast was clear.

_i'll wait for a visitor, I _thought, _and then we will see what is going on. _

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I woke up on a rocky surface. My vision was filled with Nincada, looking down at me worriedly.

"oh, wonderful! I thought I had done something wrong!" he sighed, clearly relieved.

I had only one thing on my mind "is Caleb OK?"

Nincada looked at me "I only had time to get you out of there with dig before these three pokemon came and found him" he said. "I had to focus on getting you a pecha berry, and they took him."

I noted that he had just saved my life, but I was more concerned with Caleb. "were they friendly?"

he nodded "I think so. They looked worried, and they carried him off. They did not see us because I had used dig"

"thank you for saving me, Nincada" I said, "we need to get Caleb. How long was I out?"

"practically a day and a half" came his reply, and then I saw him push an apple to me. "you must be very hungry"

_a day and a half?! _

My stomach growled loudly. I stopped thinking about Caleb for a minute and ate. Instead, I asked Nincada "how did you get away from that poison wave?"

"I did not" he said. I looked up in surprise. "i'm a ground type. It did not last longer than a minute before the poison faded away"

"lucky me you tagged along with us" I said. So there had been some usefulness to the little guy after all. I forgave Caleb and Nincada for their little joke. I felt that Caleb had been trying to tell me something. Probably that he was not interested in me.

_too bad. I will work on him until he is_

"lets go" I said standing up

"where?" Nincada asked

"to save my stupid future boyfriend" I answered, walking back to the beach.

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

_Future boyfriend, huh?_

I stood atop sarah so that she could move faster without leaving me behind. We walked up the path to a crossroads, and sarah took a left. Immediately, we saw buildings, and Pokemon everywhere.

_Treasure Town_

Sarah walked into the town. Many pokemon looked right at us, and shrank away. I understood their fear: Sarah looked ready to torch anyone standing in between her and Caleb. I honestly feared for Caleb more than anyone else; Sarah seemed to have this crazy idea of keeping Caleb in her world. Caleb won't have any of it. Sarah was being driven crazy by a love she knows won't stay.

"Sarah," I said, "do you know where you are going?"

"to the cliff" she replied

_at least she didn't say 'off the cliff'..._

"what do you hope to find there?" I asked

"team Thunderwave" she responded unhelpfully

"team what now?"

"Thunderwave" she said "a team in a story I heard. The team leader is rumored to be a human who was transformed into a pokemon."

_uh… what?_

"I fail to see how that will find Caleb in this circumstance, Sarah" I said

"They're a rescue team"

_ah… I see…_

"Sarah, if he was taken to the guild, that should be the first place we check?"

"if he is being held down there, someone on the inside could easily get him out."

"an alternative?"

"I rush the place burning everything"

"on the other claw, im sure these guys can help" I said, slightly terrified now. It was bad enough that I no longer had Caleb to protect me from this pyromaniac, but now more poor Pokemon were about to be dragged into this mess. As we reached the bluff, I began hoping that the pecha berry did not work 100%. Sarah saw a pile of leaves on the ground, and quickly cleared them with vacuum cut, revealing a staircase. She walked right in, and I made sure to jump off before anything bad happened to me.

"see ya" Sarah whispered

"wouldn't want to be ya" I whispered back.

she walked into the room, and I burrowed underground for maximum safety. I could understand the happenings through vibrations in the ground

"hello?" Sarah called

I sensed movement behind a curtain of vines in the wall.

"helloooo?" Sarah called again

suddenly, she fired a flamethrower at the curtain, and a blast of electrified water was the response

_stupid, stupid, stupid. You attacked. How do you expect to get help from Pokemon if you attack?_

I did not take pleasure from Sarah getting wrecked by a water gun and thunder wave combo. I did not take pleasure in the fact that Sarah was paralyzed, and fell to the floor, unable to move. A Swampert and a Raichu stepped out and studied her. I figured that they would toss her right out, no question. I decided to step in, and dug to the surface.

"wait" the Raichu said, clearly sensing my prescence

I surfaced next to Sarah, and immediately got attacked with a ridiculously powerful thunderbolt. Being a ground type, the attack was useless, but Sarah was hit with the excess energy.

"stop hurting her!" I squeaked.

in the face of such power, I should have run away. I should have done the smart thing and let Sarah take the hit, but I was feeling brave, and I did not want these people hurting her, even in self defence.

the Swampert towering above the Raichu said "what are you doing here?"

"we are looking for a friend of ours" I said. "he got knocked out, then carried away. I apologize for my friend's behavior, and I apologize for intruding on your home."

it seemed I did a good job. The Raichu stopped flinging sparks everywhere, and the Swampert visibly relaxed.

"who knocked him out?" the Raichu asked

"it was a skuntank. One known to you, I should think, considering how he was blasted right out of your home. Anyways, he attacked Caleb, and then a different poison attack by an unseen enemy wiped Sarah here out. I saved Sarah, but while doing so, three Pokemon I could not identify came and carried Caleb off" i said. i had lied a bit, saying that i did not know where the second poison attack came from, but i did not think that these Pokemon really wanted to know what Caleb could do to them by accident.

the Swampert and the Raichu were now listening intently, and Swampert said: "Jake, do you think that he was picked up by the guild?"

Jake the Raichu said "probably. But I have a more important question: you said their nicknames where Sarah and Caleb? Those are uncommon nicknames for pokemon."

"Sarah is a nickname" I said. "Caleb was adamant about how it was his name." I then know what Jake was asking. "Caleb is a human" I simply said.

Jake froze at this. And I continued "we really should go find him, but, ah, I think it would be best to keep Sarah paralyzed" I earned a glare from Sarah from the corners of her eyes "she might start burning things in her way to Caleb" I clarified.

Jake looked at me. "human?" he echoed

"Yeah. Like you, I believe. unless it's your Swampert friend, which I doubt very much"

"What is he like?"

Now Sarah was glaring at Jake

"Caleb is quiet, and he has a goal above all others: find a way home. He claims that he is not the best at making decisions, but he has been a leader the entire time i've known him. He does not smile much, and spends a lot of time looking at something before approaching." I said

as I described Caleb, I wondered what Sarah really thought of his goal, or if she even comprehended it. He planned to leave, and Sarah treated him like he planned on staying.

it was Swampert who spoke next. "Jake insisted that Jake was his name…"

"lets find Caleb" Jake said. "now".

Swampert went to pick up sarah, and I jumped on board before she was too high to reach. She was as stiff as a board until the paralysis flickered, and she went limp.

_I have never seen paralysis before. She can only move in quick jolts, and then she is frozen in her next position. _

she seemed to be recovering, but Jake put some more undamaging electricity into her body, renewing the paralysis. We moved quickly back the way we had come. Nobody was speaking, and soon we arrived at the crossroads again. We turned left (straight from our initial entrance) and climbed until we arrived at an odd structure shaped like an odd pokemon, with a metal grate in front. Swampert and Jake stepped on the grate

A voice from below shouted: "pokemon detected! pokemon detected!"

A second voice, further down asked: "who's footprint? Who's footprint?"

"The footprint is Swampert and Raichu! the footprint is Swampert and Raichu!"

"Heard ya!"

Voice number two was now audible from the gate: "come in, team Thunderwave!"

we walked in and climbed down a two ladders to arrive at a bottom floor. A loudred stood at the bottom, and noticed Sarah and me in Swampert's arms. "WHAT IS THIS!? DO THESE POKEMON NEED HELP!?"

_owwwwwwww…_

"no, Loudred" Jake said "these Pokemon are friends of the Pokemon you found on the beach"

"OH!" Loudred said, blasting my eardrums again. "LET ME GET CHATOT!"

_anything to get you to stop killing me with that ridiculously loud voice_

he ran off toward the birdlike Chatot. They had an exchange, and Chatot flew over. "you were here for the Absol we found?" he asked, and then noticed Sarah, paralyzed and fuming, and me in Swampert's arms "what is this?"

Swampert said "these are the Absol's friends. We were forced to subdue this absol, who was practically catatonic looking for the one called 'Caleb'."

"Caleb is the name of the Absol you have here" Jake said.

"we would like to talk to him please" I said, eardrums still ringing.

Chatot made a face. "I will have to talk to the guildmaster. One moment."

and we waited for a few minutes. I was unaware that we had forgotten to re-paralyze Sarah, or that we were about to get involved in one of the worst fights I have ever seen.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I fumed silently as we waited for that bird to arrive with news. The paralysis was wearing off, but that did not mean that the world had to know it. My view of the door was partially obstructed, but I knew well enough that the person responsible for releasing or holding Caleb was in that room, and I knew who to challenge if the correct decision was not made. I glared at Nincada out of the corner of my eye again. The little jerk had gone ahead and insulted me, knowing that I could not move. Then, Chatot emerged, tailed by the pink wigglytuff. "we can let you talk to Caleb, but he cannot leave until his weapon has been located."

that was not the correct answer.

"weapon? you mean Caleb's Crystal Star?" Nincada asked.

"that is it's title?" chatot asked

"yeah. You said it was missing?"

"it disappeared from the guildmaster's chamber's shortly after Caleb was placed in the extra room to rest. Your old room." he finished, looking at Jake.

I had had enough. I was going to talk to him NOW. Building up the most powerful flamethrower I could muster, and launching it at Chatot. The force flung me backward and out of swampert's grip. I landed on my feet, prepared to take on everyone in the room. I noticed that Wigglytuff had taken the hit for Chatot, and was now looking in my direction. The standoff was brief. I took a deep breath, bringing up flamethrower, and to my surprise, he took a breath as well. Instantly, everything became chaotic; Jake and swampert immediately pressed themselves against the wall far away from wigglytuff, terror in their eyes, and chatot flew straight up the ladder and out of the room. And I noticed a certain pokemon fall straight in between us, who had been thrown by my attack as well: Nincada. It was way too late. Flamethrower erupted from my mouth, and wigglytuff unleashed an attack I had never heard of. My flamethrower was obliterated, and so were my eardrums as the scream literally picked me up and smashed me through the wall, burying me into the dirt. I blacked out.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

**BOOOOOOOOOM…**

I jolted out of sleep, and immediately noticed the smell of smoke. What was happening out there? I ran right out of the room, trying to find the source of the battle. I found it immediately. That nice room I had snuck about in earlier was utterly destroyed.

"what happened?!" I cried out, searching with my horn for signs of life. A large blue pokemon that looked similar to the marshtomp I had fought days earlier. The other one looked like a big orange mouse with a electric cord for a tail, tipped with a lightning bolt. Those two were smashed against the wall, and knocked out cold, but clearly breathing. I noticed a pink pokemon that stood at the center of the carnage, who looked burned. He was standing in the only undamaged spot in the room.

_burns… Sarah!_

I searched more, but the only other movement was a small form laying in the smoke. I found him and checked his heartbeat. He was breathing, but he was not conscious at all. I wondered how he had withstood the attack. Sarah had told me something about it before she had gone **crazy**. Apparently, Pokemon bodies stiffen up after unconsciousness has occurred, and it's difficult to damage at all during that time. That makes it hard for Pokemon to die in combat. I was grateful for this aspect now. I ran back to the pink Pokemon with Nincada still in my mouth. I put him down and produced a rawst berry from my pack and tried to give it to the Pokemon

"it's OK, friend!" he waved the berry away. "watch!"

I watched the guildmaster, who now had little stars surrounding him. The stars were absorbed into his body, and he glowed yellow for a moment. When the glow faded, he was absolutely fine. Nonplussed, I let go of the berry, which hit the ground with a thud. I shut my jaw, which was still open. "um… who were you attacking?" I asked. I was pretty sure that Sarah had just made a huge mistake, but I wanted to be sure. I could not sense her, after all.

"a mean red Absol" the guildmaster said, shattering my hope that she had not gotten herself in another tight situation. I tried to defend her. "her name is Sarah" I said "and she was fixated on me. She seems to have a crush on me of sorts. Where is she?"

"oh, friend! a love story! but your friend is in the wall right now." he said

I had winced at the words 'love story', but now I realized that Sarah had provoked the guildmaster, resulting in him promptly smashing her deeper than any buried treasure. I needed to save her. The only pokemon who knew dig was unconscious, but I could fix that. I brought out the reviver seed from the crystal cave and fed it to him.

Nincada woke up instantly, perfectly fine. There was no time, and I started barking orders. "get Sarah out of the wall, she's buried! then find a way to keep her subdued!"

Nincada understood perfectly. "on it" he said before disappearing underground. I rushed back to the guildmaster. "is anyone else hurt?" I demanded, before realizing that yelling at the guy who just blew up a room easily is not a good idea. He did not seem to notice, though, and started looking around "I think that Chatot escaped unharmed" he said, relieved. "oh, you found your item!"

I looked at Crystal Star, then back at the guildmaster. "yeah" I said. "found"

at that moment, nincada appeared out of the wall, towing Sarah behind him. I rust over. "Sarah!" I yelled, hoping that my friend had not suffocated in the dirt. She was still. "come on, you" I said "you are not allowed to die around me, you hear? WAKE UP!"

she coughed dirt out of her mouth, and her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at me and smiled "hi, Caleb"

"Hello, Sarah. I responded.

"WHAT?!" she yelled

"I said hello"

"YOU NEED TO SPEAK UP!"

her ears were damaged. That was clear. No wonder there was such a loud noise, the attack the guildmaster used must have been sound based. I yelled "YOU NEED TO QUIET DOWN. YOUR HEARING IS IMPAIRED"

"I STILL CANT HEAR YOU!" she said.

she had gone completely deaf. I started to panic, not knowing what to do. I looked at the guildmaster. "can you heal others too? Sarah's lost her hearing"

he said "of course, friend!" and lumbered over. This time, he used a pink pulsing attack that enveloped Sarah completely, and I thought that it did not look very much like a healing move. Regardless, Sarah shook her head and blinked. "Caleb?" she asked, unsure of herself. "i'm here" I said. "can you hear me?"

"yes"

"excellent. Let's keep it that way."

luckily, she was too out of it to redefine that.

"I need to say something to you" she said.

"sure" I said, coming closer.

she whispered so softly I almost could not hear her. "im so sorry" she said. "please forgive me. I won't act that way again. I promise."

"apology accepted" I said, matching her volume. "I understand perfectly, Sarah. But it can't happen the way you want. I have to go home as soon as I have a way."

she shook her head. "I disagree Caleb" she said, looking up at me with the kindness that had disappeared from her when she discovered my joke. "I can change your mind eventually"

I looked sadly at her. I remembered that she had a goal too. "just please don't go crazy again" I said, that sadness still in my voice. Why was I sad?

_i'm sad because I am still pretending not to be slipping into this fantasy bit by bit._

* * *

**Hello, Everybody!**

**I hope you enjoyed the most recent chapter of my story, The Absolite Chronicles. I enjoyed making this chapter particularly because of my efforts to set up changes over time in my characters. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. my next chapter is coming up, and i will do my best not to disappoint you. Thank you all for reading. **

**-Hyperjade**


	6. Chapter Six: On the Edge

Chapter 6: On the Edge

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I tried attacking again, only to find failure. Again. The stupid shadow ball never worked for me. We were in a part of the plains close to town, and I was trying to perfect shadow ball. I was a bit tired of only being able to burn things after our little issue with Wigglytuff and the guild (Caleb and Nincada agreed wholeheartedly). Wigglytuff had forgiven me completely, but Chatot had been wary of me since. Caleb and Nincada watched me accidentally blow myself up a few more times. The stupid shadow ball just inflated and fluctuated and exploded in my face. Caleb spoke up.

"Why are you using your mouth for that attack?"

It seemed like a really silly question to me. "that's how the attack works, Caleb" I sighed.

"Not for you it doesn't" he said unnecessarily. I wondered where he was going with that until he said "ghost type energy is focused mostly in your front claws, right?"

I had not thought about that. I realized that I was dragging the energy through my body in a way that it did not want to go. My front legs felt like I had fire in them. "how do you expect me to do it?" I asked, wondering if he had actually thought of an answer.

"Try sending the energy directly out of your claws into the air" he instructed "I have no idea if it will work at all, but it's worth a shot".

"Okay" I said in a noncommittal tone. I spread my forelegs apart in front of me, and tried to force the energy straight up instead of up my legs. Much to my surprise, a small shadow ball began forming. I got excited, which caused me to lose focus. The small sphere dissipated into the air as smoke.

"Imagine that" Caleb said a bit dryly. "you've got a smokescreen"

I made a face at him, and tried again. getting the shadow ball formed was easy enough, but I realized an issue right away: when I tried to fire it, it went **backwards** from the direction I was firing it at, straight at my face. This explosion was a bit worse than the others, mostly because the ball did not explode for at least ten seconds, literally carrying me into the air before blowing up. I was falling, and I was in no shape to soft-land on the ground with my forelegs hurting. Luckily, Nincada had the idea to quickly set up a pit, braced himself at the top, and basically make himself a pad to land softly on. He was hurt, but he seemed glad that I was OK. I really meant that he was quick in making that pit. The little guy was a much better a teammate than I gave him credit for, and he seemed not to care that he had gotten hurt in the process of saving me from a bad fall.

Caleb walked over to us. "well done Nincada" he praised the little guy, and then turned to me. "smokescreens, flight," he laughed "what else don't we know about you?"

It dawned on me that he was joking around easily, something that he always had trouble with before. I wondered what it meant for him. I wondered what it meant for us. His body had gotten tougher, with muscles rippling underneath the fur, and he walked like he was much lighter now. I understood now why he had trouble walking when I met him, because he had explained some about human anatomy when I insisted that I wanted to know about humans. Apparently they were bipedal, and were built completely differently from an Absol.

"_Frankly, humans are weaklings compared to any Pokemon" _he had said.

Caleb interrupted my thinking by turning away to look at the sun, which was setting. "we need to make a decision about where to go next. Wigglytuff said he was willing to let us sleep in the extra room for a while." Caleb informed us "we ought to get back now."

"I agree" Nincada said. "lets go".

Nincada practiced a new technique that he had put together with two of his attacks. His scratch was a weak attack, and his dig attack did not do much in the way of attacking. What he was doing now combined the two, introducing a powerful stabbing attack from underground. Then he clambered onto my back and we set off.

The guild was good as new, somehow. The wall had been fixed entirely, and all signs of burn damage were gone. Caleb searched the place with his red eyes, and said "there is literally no change from when I first arrived here… no sign of battle at all".

Caleb was right, it was very odd. Then a familiar figure flew up to Caleb. "you're back, Caleb" Chatot said "your timing is impeccable. The guildmaster wishes to see you now".

"Excellent" Caleb said

We walked up to the fancy doors, and I had an automatic reaction because of the memory of our fight. A little fire escaped my mouth, and Caleb shot me a warning glance.

"Hiya!" came the voice of Wigglytuff as we entered the room. He was standing in the center of the room, with some things on the ground in front of him. One was a fancy box, another was a normal looking bag, and the third was a pile of twelve black gummis and six brown gummis.

"Hello, Wigglytuff" Caleb said politely. I might have been less polite, so I decided to keep quiet for the time being.

"hi friends!" Wigglytuff said again, this time looking at me and Nincada. I simply said "hi", fearing what might escape my mouth if I said anything more. Nincada simply said "hello".

Wigglytuff looked at each of us in turn, looking us over like he was judging our abilities. He then said "why don't you look in this box please?"

B_ecause I am afraid you will take me apart again._

Caleb stepped forward, seeing me hesitate, and pushed the box open with his right foreleg. He looked in it. "what are these items, Wigglytuff?" he asked.

"Why, necessary items for your new exploration team!" he said.

E_xploration team?_

Nincada became restless beside me, and I probably had an odd expression.

Caleb blinked. That seemed to be his way of showing his confusion or surprise. Probably both in this case. "pardon?" he asked, his voice a bit shakier now. I realized that Wigglytuff had really shaken him with that.

O_f course, he has things to do. He wants to get home._

I then realized that this was my best chance. If I could get him involved in this, he had little chance of leaving me. At least for a while.

"Caleb" I began, and he turned to me. "I think it's a good idea."

He blinked again. "but…"

"An exploration team would have access to knowledge and reasons to travel long distances" I said. "you might find your way home"

That sealed the deal instantly. But Caleb had not realized that the commitment that this involved would keep him from actually leaving for a while longer. Maybe he had understood that, and decided that he could get around it somehow. I thought not. He nodded, and looked at Nincada "what do you think? Want to join us?" he asked Nincada.

Nincada looked very confused by Caleb's change of heart on the matter, but once he realized that he was not being left out, he was very eager. "of course!" he answered "thank you so much!"

"That's settled then!" Wigglytuff said, and pushed the items to us. I walked forward and looked in the bag. It was bigger inside than outside. I had not heard of such items. Caleb looked in as well, and began muttering quietly to himself. I only caught "laws of physics" before he was looking in the box again. He pulled out a black cloth and a red cloth, and then a badge of sorts. The box was now empty. The badge was blank.

"What will be your team name?" Wigglytuff asked us. "you will need to identify yourself". I noticed that Wigglytuff was no longer being goofy, like this was really an important part of our team. I looked at the badge at Caleb's feet, blank and waiting for a name to be inscribed on it.

"Its your choice, Caleb" I said.

Caleb looked like he had been offered a free poisonous fruit. He started muttering again, thinking aloud. Finally, he looked at me and Nincada, then back at Wigglytuff.

"Team Edge" he decided. "does that work?"

"It works perfectly, friend!" Wigglytuff said. Then, he said "YOOM-TA!" and there was a powerful flash in the room. When the black spots disappeared from my eyes, the badge read:

Team Edge

Normal Rank

Exploration Team

Now chatot spoke. "you are now guild members" he said. "you are rookies in need of training, and will live in the guild until you have graduated. The room Caleb used when he was recovering will serve as your new room."

the audience was over, and our new lifestyle had begun. Caleb led the way back to the room, where there were still only two beds, but that was fine because Nincada preferred to sleep underground anyways. "see you two in the morning" I said, and promptly fell into my new bed of hay, feeling exhausted. Before I could get to sleep, I heard Caleb yowl in frustration as he laid down on his right side **again**, stabbing his horn into the hay. He readjusted onto his left and fell right asleep. I slept, too.

_tomorrow will be a long day._

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

"UP AND AT EM'!" a voice roared "IT'S MORNING!"

I felt like I had gotten no sleep at all, but my mind had been kicked into high gear by that ridiculously loud voice. It was a miracle that I did not go deaf.

"Morning" I heard directly underneath me. Nincada surfaced and pushed me out of my bed. Shaking off the ringing in my ears, I stood up.

"Get up, Sarah" Nincada said, and pushed her out of bed as well.

My bed was messed up badly. I had cut it up with my horn while tossing and turning in my sleep.

"You've got hay on your horn" was the first thing Sarah said this morning. I shook my head violently, but the hay stayed. "i'll get it" Sarah volunteered, and I let her pull it off of me. I noticed that she was back to taking her time and trying to give me pretty looks. I ignored it and started walking towards the door. As I reached it, it slammed open, smashing me into the soft wall behind it. I heard that voice again, this time right next to me.

"YOUR LATE, ROOKIES!" he yelled. I hadn't even gotten a proper look at this guy yet. "GET OVER HERE!"

_Geez. What a loud voice! I had just recovered from that. _

"Caleb!" I heard Sarah scream in panic. "get away from the door!" she yelled at the Pokemon, who apparently obliged. Sarah pulled it back to spill me out of the new Absol shaped indentation in the wall. I got my first good look at the Pokemon who had blasted my eardrums three times. It was bipedal, and purple, with oddly shaped eyes and two circular ears. His mouth was ridiculously large; he could have eaten me in one bite, easy. I hoped he wouldn't.

"Ow" I said

"GET UP, ROOKIE!" he screamed at me "IF YOU MAKE WIGGLYTUFF MAD…"

That was plenty for me. Ignoring the ringing in my ears, I scrambled up and followed the Pokemon out of the room. Everyone in the guild was standing in two horizontal lines, waiting in front of Chatot and Wigglytuff. No two Pokemon were the same. There was one that looked like a sunflower with legs and two leaves for arms, who saw me immediately. "ooh!" she shrieked "there he is!"

I was instantly swarmed by the Pokemon. questions. questions. I couldn't even hear most of them. There was one Pokemon that looked like a small beaver with a different tail, and had buck teeth. "Im glad you're all right, yup yup!" he said in a goofy voice.

I shot Chatot a look like: _help._

"Everyone, please!" Chatot said, getting my message. "there is time for questions later, but we have to start off the day."

"Right!" everyone said. And they launched into a quick chant, involving three ideals that I could not even hear because of the ringing in my ears. I only heard the last line: "and THREE! smiles go for miles!".

"Okay, Pokemon" chatot said "let's get to work!"

"HOORAY!" the whole group said, including Sarah and Nincada.

I don't chant. Ever. I don't chant I don't sing I don't dance. I just do not see the point of it. I feared that I may have to soon though.

By _tomorrow morning at least, I will be expected to chant and sing along with the rest of these Pokemon. _

On that happy note, I noticed that we were the only ones in the room besides chatot. He walked over to us, and said: "today, I will have Bidoof show you around the guild and treasure town. He will show you the different facilities, the job boards, and all of the useful buildings to explorers in treasure town. Please feel free to ask any questions you like. I will bring bidoof down here now." he then left us there, flying up the ladder. I hated that ladder. It had taken me three tries to get up it last time, being judged by Sarah, Nincada, and Croagunk (the one stirring the cauldron).

Suddenly, the small beaver like creature came down the ladder slowly. Bidoof walked up to us and said: "Good morning! Chatot tells me that you need a tour".

"Thank you, Bidoof" Sarah responded.

"Aw, shucks" he said, embarrassed. Then he led us up. I went last for maximum privacy in my inevitable failure. It only took me two tries this time.

_I'm getting better._

Bidoof waited for me on the second floor. One more ladder to climb, and this time I was surrounded by other, judging eyes. Bidoof had other idea's. He walked over to one of the two boards, to the left of the ladder. "this board here" he said, "is basic jobs for exploration teams. rescue missions and such. You won't be taking any jobs today, that's for sure."

Bidoof was moving quickly, like he was in a hurry. He led us to the board on the right of the ladders, and notified us that this one was the outlaw notice board.

"Outlaws" I repeated.

"Yes. Big tough thieves and other criminals" he said. "you dont want to take outlaw jobs until you have at least risen in rank, showing that you have much better experience in the field."

I looked down at the badge attached to my armour. The words 'Normal Rank' stood out. And all you had to do to become a target of a guild was to steal things and be difficult to take down. I guess there was not much else to do in the way of bad things. This community of Pokemon so far had shown that life was so much simpler than in my world. Most were kind unless they were attacking us in a mystery dungeon.

"Hang on a minute!" Sarah suddenly exclaimed, pushing her way to the board. "Caleb!" she said, "its Marshtomp!"

"Surely it was a different Marshtomp" I said, looking at the picture of the Pokemon on a wanted poster, labeled as a low level outlaw.

"I recognize the picture!" she said "you don't?"

"Not the best at discerning faces yet" I admitted. "if it was the same guy, then you already beat him up."

Bidoof had been listening quietly. Now he spoke up. "if you two just took down an outlaw on your way here, then by golly, you must be strong. Where was he?".

"Right where that poster said he was" I said "outside the mystifying forest."

"What did he do to you?" Bidoof asked.

"Incapacitated me by stuffing mud down my throat" I answered. "it was Sarah here who took him out." remembering the event was not fun. I remember not being able to breath, and almost blacking out while Sarah battled that prick. She wiped him out with vacuum cut, and I fell unconscious. I woke to Sarah standing over me. I had swallowed all of it because I could not throw it up while unconscious. The only negative effect was me slowing down, but it was still disgusting.

Nincada spoke up "why haven't I heard this yet?".

"Mostly because I tried to block it out of my mind" I answered him. "i'm sorry, Bbidoof, but we walked away from the battle without taking him with us".

"Its alright, by golly" he said. "just be glad you walked away from it".

I wondered what that meant, but Bidoof had moved on.

"Over there," he said, "is Chimecho. She can heal you up with heal bell, and she handles team alignments".

In other words, she was the nurse and the one who controls who you can officially take into dungeons with you. That was useful. Now Bidoof went slowly up the ladder. I went second, also moving slowly. I almost fell several times, but managed to get up without failure by just moving really slowly. We walked out of the guild and around the grate. I had not been to treasure town yet, and was ready to find out what exactly was going on there. Sarah had not told me much about it. It looked rather like an event back home where on the second Friday of the month, small stores appeared all over the roadsides. I did not actually see any homes, so they may have been hidden within the surrounding landscape. The visible buildings were all stores or services or attractions. I saw a dark building on the right first, which had a floating Pokemon in it. He looked ghost-like.

"Duskull" Bidoof said "handles the bank. Any money you wish to store can be given directly to Duskull. He has never lost any of anybody's. Ever."

I worried about it, but that was likely the aura the ghost-like Pokemon was exuding.

"Chansey is down there" Bidoof gestured downhill to the left to a small pink building "handles Pokemon eggs found in dungeons by explorers. When they hatch, the teams who found them decide whether to let that Pokemon join their team or to have it go and start their own life."

"Hang on" I said. "joining a rescue team **at birth**? is that even remotely safe?"

Sarah moved closer to me and whispered so that Bidoof could not hear her. "Caleb, Pokemon grow more powerful through exposure to combat. It's a part of life here. There couldn't be anything better for a newborn Pokemon's growth than joining a team who will protect them through dangerous locations."

That sounded wrong. So wrong. But then again, I really had no say in how things worked here. If that is really what helped Pokemon grow, then that was a part of natural life. I had no place protesting it.

"Next up is Electivire's link shop" Bidoof said. "he can link two moves of your choice so that you can use a second attack much easier, and with less energy. It only works for the second attack, however".

We moved on down the street, coming up to a very familiar shop this time.

"This is-" Bidoof began.

"A Kecleon shop" I interrupted. I walked up to the two kecleons. This time there was a difference. One of them was purple in color instead of green. "hello," I said. "i was not aware that you guys had shops in other communities".

"We have shops everywhere" the green one answered. "even in mystery dungeons. We are happy to serve you anywhere".

"Thank you" I said, and then Sarah walked up.

"Is Caleb causing trouble?" she asked teasingly, looking at me.

"None at all!" the purple one said, as if the idea was silly. "you two are just as polite as when you talked to my brothers in Crystal Community!"

"They already told you? That was fast" Sarah said.

"Are all the Kecleon shops run by your brothers?" I asked.

"yes" both said, the green one looking at me, the purple one looking at Sarah.

_That's a lot of brothers._

"We best continue, yup yup!" said Bidoof behind us.

"Pleasure meeting you" said Nincada to the Kecleon brothers, the only one of us who remembered to say a proper goodbye.

next we came to a big building with a Pokemon in front. It was brown, with a bone helmet of sorts, (or was that his head?) and held a bone in his left hand. That whole appearance was not very reassuring. "good morning, Marowak!" Bidoof said.

"who are these?" he asked.

"These Pokemon are our new recruits" Bidoof said, as if he was used to using that answer. Then he said "they are team Edge.".

"I see." Marowak said. "well, you three feel free to come to my dojo and participate in my challenges".

"challenges?" Sarah asked.

"I have set up numerous artificial mystery dungeons within my dojo" he said proudly "they are type specific, so you can use them to test your strategies for battling each type".

"Thank you" Sarah said.

N_umerous? That building is too small for even one. Oh, wait, its like that treasure bag. Why is it that these Pokemon are capable of breaking the laws of physics on a daily basis?_

Our next stop was a building shaped like something from a classic totem pole. An oddly shaped bird. I then realized that the same Pokemon was behind the desk.

"Xatu appraisal" Bidoof said. "he opens specific locked boxes that you find in dungeons".

Very specific. But then again, if I had needed to open an odd locked box, I would need to go here.

And finally, we came across a large brown building, with a massive Pokemon inside at the counter. It looked over and saw us, gesturing for us to come over. We obliged, and the giant intimidating Pokemon said in a sweet female voice: hello, sweetie, what can I do for you today?".

I was unsure of what to do, but Bidoof walked right up to the counter. "hello, Kangaskhan" he said.

"Why, if it isn't Bidoof" Kangaskhan said sweetly. "do you need anything?".

"I am just showing our new rescue team the different facilities available for exploration team use" Bidoof answered.

"Well" she said. "i will explain what I do for them".

She turned to us. "I am Kangaskhan" she said "I handle storage for rescue teams across the world.".

"Across the world?" I asked "do you have other's helping you?".

"Of course, sweetie" she said. "every region of the world has a Kangaskhan Storage. The rest of the time, teams can use Kangaskhan rocks to store or take materials and other tools, or save your location."

"Saving?" that made no sense. I was not in a video game.

Sarah leaned over. "you can choose where you end up if you are beaten by a mystery dungeon. right now, because we joined the guild, we would end up in our beds".

I blinked "okay…".

As we were turning to leave, Bidoof asked for two of the Oran berries he had saved in there for his next trip. I barely remembered to say goodbye. "saving" I muttered so softly that nobody heard me "i guess that if they can make things bigger on the inside, they can find ways to change where freaky magic dungeons place you if they knock you right out."

We returned to the guild. The day was not even halfway over, and the guild was much quieter. "most other teams are on missions at the moment" Bidoof said. I noted that most of the pages were taken off of both boards. "sometimes they are away for more than a day" Bidoof said "but most of our jobs are within the distance that we can cross within a day. To get back, teams use their badges to transport back immediately."

That was interesting, teleportation via team leader badges. "instruct me in that process" I said.

Bidoof seemed taken aback by my sudden harshness. "sure" he said "you just concentrate psychic energy into it. You can also save Pokemon from dungeons by using normal energy. If you need to rest in the middle of the dungeon, use ghost energy, and you will become unnoticeable for a time period. You will also fall asleep. You can't be touched or seen in that state."

"Thank you" I said. That was all useful. It would definitely help us get missions done and return in time for the night.  
the rest of the day was truly uneventful. I enjoyed it, but it would not last.

* * *

**Hey, guys!**

**So you learned about some of the mechanics of this Pokemon world, and you were given more detail about Treasure town and exploration teams. And now Team Edge has formed through some trickery on Sarah's part. i hope you all enjoyed, and i shall update again when i can. **

**-Hyperjade**


	7. Chapter Seven: Swords of Wind and Water

Chapter 7: Swords of Wind and Water

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

After two hours of listening to our stomachs growl, the three of us were just about to snap from boredom and hunger. Bidoof had suggested to us that we eat with the rest of the guild this time. We had not eaten breakfast, and were just dying to find out why this was worth the wait. Caleb was of course the logical one, claiming that we would be best off sticking to a regular eating schedule. Nincada was also impatient: his stomach was much smaller than ours, and it was probably completely empty.

"you know what" Caleb said "why don't we look over the notice boards and think about our first mission?"

I agreed mostly because it would get my mind off of my stomach. When we got to the boards, however, I realized that the boards were even emptier than before. "perhaps some teams work at night?" Caleb said, more analytically than confused.

we walked to the left mission board. Caleb looked at a easy looking one, set at Mt. Horn. "Is that the one we will do?" Nincada asked, speaking for the first time in a while. "Perhaps" Caleb said. "It is very basic: save two Nidorans from Mt Horn's seventh floor." he frowned. "this is the only paper to mention the gender of the Nidorans. Why is that important in this scenario?"

It was Nincada who had the answer: "Nidorans look different based on their gender" he informed Caleb. "female Nidorans are blue, and males are purple." He looked at the page. "One male and one female Nidoran need to be saved from mt horn. Lets hope this mission is there when we wake" he finished.

Then, we heard the wonderful sound of dinner being called.

**Ding ding ding ding ding. **"Dinner is ready!" chimed Chimecho

We rushed downstairs, and saw Chimecho floating at the entrance of the mess hall. Everyone was rushing towards chimecho at a speed that I worried might hurt her. Caleb and Nincada where the only other Pokemon who were being orderly in entering the mess hall. Big bowls full of apples, oran berries, a few bananas (from Caleb's harvest on our way here), and to Caleb's evident delight: pecha berries. I made a mental note to feed him pecha berries more often. Everybody was clamoring as they waited for the word from Chatot. We took our spots at the table: three of the last five plates at the end.

Chatot spoke up once we were all prepared. "lets eat!" he called from the head of the table. Every Pokemon in the room immediately started chowing down. I followed suit, and I saw Nincada do the same. Caleb, however, was eating slower than the others. I wondered what was wrong, but he was simply savoring. Particularly the pecha berries. It took him three times as long to finish his food than the other Pokemon, who just stared at him. Even Chatot seemed dumbfounded by his control over himself. By the time he finished, he had everyone's attention, and some frustration to go with it.

"i want to go to bed…"

"hurry up will you?"

"just eat faster"

"how can he do that?"

meanwhile, Wigglytuff danced with a giant, wonderful looking apple balanced on his head. He was oblivious to Caleb it seemed, but when Caleb finished, wigglytuff stopped dancing immediately, widened his mouth bigger than he should have been able to, and ate the giant apple in one bite.

"well, that was a lovely dinner!" he exclaimed. "off to bed, friends! there is a long day ahead of you tomorrow!"

with that, everyone left quickly, their bedtimes disrupted by Caleb's casual eating. A few shot him frustrated glances. I was okay with his pace, and Caleb pretended to be oblivious to the actions of our fellow guild members. Nincada climbed onto my back, and with our bellies full we walked back to our chambers. Without a word, we all laid down and slept.

"UP AND AT EM'!" Loudred roared again "IT'S MORNING!"

i shuddered in bed, but I did not have to wait for Nincada to 'help' me out of bed this time. I rose to my feet, and plodded out of the room. Caleb and Nincada joined me in a few seconds, and we arrived at the main room. We were not the last this time. quickly, we started off the day by chanting the first three rules of the guild.

_A ONE, A TWO...A ONE-TWO-THREE_

_ONE! DON'T SHIRK WORK!_

_TWO! RUN AWAY AND PAY!_

_THREE! SMILES GO FOR MILES!_

i sang with them, I thought it kinda corny and fun. Caleb did not feel the same. He mouthed some of the words, but no sound escaped him. He did a good enough job looking like he was singing to not get caught, but there was no sense of humor in this eyes. We then moved quickly to the next floor and walked straight to the job board. The Mt. Horn job was there, and Caleb pulled it down. We figured out how to take the job, and stuffed the directions in our treasure bag.

"you" a hostile voice said behind me.

Caleb automatically started to reach for Crystal Star, before realizing that it was likely not an enemy. Likewise, I had almost spun and used vacuum cut. (i had been threatened by Chatot with extreme punishment if I used my flamethrower within the guild ever again)

a Mightyena stalked toward us with a Machoke and a Bastiodon in tow. "who are you?" the mightyena demanded. He was clearly hostile, but he would have to be part of a team. Otherwise, why was he in here.

Caleb answered "My name is Caleb, and these two are Nincada and Sarah" he said, gesturing to each of us in turn. "we are the guild's newest recruits, named Team Edge. We were about to-"

"i don't care what you are doing" the Mightyena snarled, "i only asked who you are"

boy, Caleb did not appreciate that. He looked at Mightyena disapprovingly before asking "who are you, **and **what are you doing?"

"we are Team Rush" Mightyena growled "and we are talking to a fool, a red monstrosity, and a bug".

Caleb did not react to the word 'fool', but the instant I was described as a red monstrosity, he shuddered and became utterly furious. The same fury that had shown when that Absol called me a 'thing'. His head lowered a bit, and his eyes practically smoldered. With sudden fear I realized that Crystal Star was turning from a calm blue to an angry red, reflecting Caleb's mood. I worried that some explosions might be caused, but I was not about to defend Mightyena.

Mightyena noticed the color change as well, and growled. Caleb growled right back, his growl lower and much more dangerous sounding. A week ago, Caleb did not even know how to growl. A fight might have broken out between the two leaders, but they were interrupted by Chatot.

Chatot made a **Squawk!** sound, and said "what is going on, here?"

The two of them tore their gazes apart and settled them now on chatot, still with hostility in their eyes. Crystal Star dimmed a bit, but was not about to turn back to the safe color of blue. Chatot recoiled, realizing that standing anywhere near these two would be a mistake. Even so, he said "i will not have two respectable exploration teams fight! I forbid you to do it!

"You forbid me" Mightyena repeated harshly

"**Two **respectable teams?" Caleb growled

"Think you aren't good enough?" Mightyena said to Caleb

Caleb went back to glaring at Mightyena "no person can judge others based on color or species without losing all respectability" he said, fury igniting Crystal Star's red glow again.

"STOP!" me and Chatot exclaimed together.

There was a horribly long standoff, and then Mightyena noticed that his teammates were not exactly paying attention, as if he had done this before, and they wanted no part of it. Mightyena backed off, and Crystal Star's glow faded so that it was just plain red.

"I'm sorry about that" I whispered to Chatot. "he only get's angry like that occasionally"

"I see." Chatot whispered back. "i will have to have a chat with Team Rush later about that. I assume that they were attacking you?"

"Verbally, but that's all it takes for Caleb to get fired up on this topic." I whispered. I noted that most of the guild members were not openly hostile towards me. This included Chatot.

"We should be on our way" Nincada whispered to Caleb

His blade went back to blue. "very well".

We were on our way to Mt. Horn. It was apparently within the mountain range, and there was apparently a path straight through the mountains that led to the mystery dungeon within Mt. Horn. We ran at top speed, Nincada on my back again. I really don't think Nincada would ever ride on Caleb when he had that weapon on his back. I was okay with that, I did not exactly think that thing was safe. We would need a break soon, and would likely take one at the base of the mountain range. We raced east, with some mountains on the right, and a vast forest on the left. Initially, that forest had a lot of blue oran berries in them, and we had restocked. Then, the forest promptly switched from blue to red as apples replaced berries. We restocked on those too. Our bananas were in the guild's food stock.

"That doesn't look right…" Nincada said. He was looking at a weird dark spire that was about five strides tall, and had a diameter of about a foot. It hovered two inches above a blackened patch of grass. Caleb marked the location on his map. He was not the best with maps, but by pouring water type energy into his badge, which I don't believe was easy to do, the map received a blue mark near the corner of Apple Woods. He put the map away. "let's keep moving" he said, shaking his head.

so we continued, and only when we hit a spot when the mountains surrounded us, and a path appeared that we rested. A Kangaskhan rock stood near the entrance. Caleb frowned. "will that affect the badges teleportation?"

"no" Nincada said. "the badge only transports people to the guild."

Caleb walked to the stone statue of Kangaskhan and tried to figure out how to use the saving mechanism. He did not have much luck at all. "it's just a stupid rock!" he protested.

i walked over and looked inside the pouch on the statue. It did look like nothing special, but when I tried to feel the area around me with my horn, the rock definitely had a freaky energy coming off of it. Caleb touched the rock, and I felt the energy make a connection with Caleb's own energy. "i think you just did it, Caleb"

he said: "lets hope so". And then he went and made himself comfortable on the ground near the statue.

"someone should keep watch" Nincada said "i'll wake you two up in one hour."

"you arent tired?" I asked

"not at all" he replied, and then climbed onto the statue's head and kept an eye on the road.

i walked over to Caleb, who was pretending to sleep. I knew that he intending on keeping watch too. "go to sleep, Caleb, Nincada can handle it" I said, and saw him relax slowly. I went to lie down right next to him, but he suddenly stiffened up.

_not yet. _

i went to the other side of the statue. It took me several minutes to fall asleep, and when I did, I had dreams of future events I had planned out. I did not know if they would happen, but I would do my best.

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

I did not need to sleep much. I always woke up prior to Loudred's wake up call, and was always eager to start the day. Nincadas in general did not have to sleep much, and I was wide awake. Even so, I almost missed the dark shape slipping past a rock on the far side of the clearing. Slipping off the statue, I burrowed quietly underground. This actually gave me a better view of the landscape and what was moving on it. I saw a Pokemon behind a stone, moving too stealthily for me to properly make out it's shape. I burrowed closer to it, feeling the vibrations of it's movement. I heard sniffing, like some Pokemon following another's scent. It was MIghtyena, and he had followed us. I did not sense anyone else, no Machoke or Bastiodon. Mightyena had likely come alone. Why?

_Revenge. He holds a grudge_

He suddenly began walking towards the statue. He found us. I made a decision. I burrowed over to each of my friends in turn, waking them up and whispering the situation to them. They feigned sleep, and I prepared to attack. He stalked up to my friends... And then just sat down and waited.

_What?_

I again whispered to my friends. I told them what was happening. Mightyena just sat there, watching. I waited for him to attack, and he waited for something else. His friends? For my friends to wake up? I burrowed quietly over to a blind spot and surfaced. If Mightyena smelled me, he gave no sign of it. But what he was waiting for came: Crystal Star began to shine in blue. Mightyena smiled, and walked over to it so quietly that I would not have known if I was asleep. He reached down and tried to grip Crystal Star.

_he wants the blade. He wants if for his own. _

As he reached for the blade, the glow took on a different color: black. Mightyena was shocked with a dark lightning spark, and as he recovered, Caleb attacked. Suddenly Mightyena was being held down by a paw, and Crystal Star was held to his neck. Caleb's eyes smoldered, probably remembering the incident at the guild.

"Caleb-" Mightyena pleaded

And then, Caleb stepped off of mightyena. He put his blade down on the ground. All anger had vanished from him. I realized that Caleb never wanted to hurt mightyena at all.

but Caleb was still stern and disapproving in tone. "do you understand?" he asked

mightyena still lay on his back, shocked. Caleb sat down. "please answer me mightyena. do you understand what I told you back at the guild? about being respectable?"

Mightyena still had no answer.

"you wanted to see the blade" Caleb said. "go ahead. Look"

at this point, Mightyena got up. "do you mean that?"

"yes"

"why"

"because if you attack me or my friends, the blade will strike you back."

Caleb was so sure about that. Then again, he had been paying attention to how he had not been hurt by the poison wave, and how it only hurt Sarah during the time when she became dangerous. I did not know if that was coincidental, but the blade had struck Mightyena before.

Mightyena approached the blade again, and it started to turn black. He reared back.

"Stop that!" he barked.

"I'm doing nothing at all, Mightyena." Caleb said. It's your own spirit reflecting in the blade. You have shown the blade you're cruelty to Sarah because of nothing other than color. Crystal Star is reflecting that. Think about it. Apologize to Sarah, and consider how little it matters how she is different."

i could see Mightyena think about it. It was more likely that Caleb was playing a mind game with Mightyena than telling the complete truth. His game, I realized, was transforming Mightyena into a better Pokemon in general. "Sarah…" Mightyena said.

"Yes?" she said suddenly up and next to Caleb.

"I…" he choked out the words, but it sounded sincere. Like he was sorrowful. "i apologize, Sarah."

"Thank you" Sarah said.

"Would you like to try holding the blade?" Caleb asked.

"No thank you" Mightyena answered.

As he was leaving, Caleb spoke up. "one thing, if you are heading back to the guild, there is something along the way that we saw. If you could check on it and report to chatot and Wigglytuff, that would be great. If you don't want to, we will talk to Chatot and Wigglytuff ourselves."

"What is it?" Mightyena asked.

Caleb took out the map and showed Mightyena the mark. MIghtyena, being a team leader, took out his map and marked the same spot. "ill check it out" he promised. "good luck".

"Thank you, Mightyena" Caleb said. "Nincada, where are you?".

"Here" I said, and scuttled over to them. climbing on Sarah, I said "it's been only about 20 minutes" .

"Oh well" Sarah said.

"I feel rested" Caleb said.

And we moved into the canyon.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

That had been difficult.

I don't have a tendency to play mind games, but brute force would only lead to him holding a grudge. On the plus side, we were definitely a proper team. Sarah caught on and played her part beautifully (don't tell her I used that word), and nincada was excellent at sneaking around underground, and was so quiet and precise that he could let us know what was going on right in front of the enemy without giving anything away. I have not gotten to see him attack anything, but it was a matter of time. Also, I noted that I was capable of taking naps. That never worked for me as a human. I guess that there was less stress here, or something. But we were running to save two Pokemon trapped high on Mt Horn. Realizing this, I picked up the pace. Mt Horn loomed above us. The entrance to the dungeon was right in front of us. And another Kangaskhan rock was there. I walked over to it and touched it. My horn alerted me to the link between me and the statue now. I stored some of our apples and oran berries that we likely would not need, in an effort to save space.

"Caleb"

"Yeah, Sarah?"

She was holding a Technical Machine that said 'water pulse'. Where on earth had she gotten that?

"Go ahead" I said.

"I need your help, silly"

She really did not, but I obliged anyways. She gave me puppy eyes while I did it, which was harder to ignore this time. Weird.

"We should go" Nincada informed me.

"Yes" I said. "of course"

And we dived into our third major mystery dungeon.

I had expected a lot of pesky rock types again, but this place was populated mostly by bugs. Sarah seemed disappointed, maybe because she wanted to try out her new attack.

"We should probably use these gummis now" Nincada said, bringing them out of Sarah's pack.

"You should probably tell me what they do first" I said, looking at the small things. Nincada had piled them, two half dozen piles of black colored 'gummis' and one half dozen stack of brown colored gummis.

"They boost your IQ" Sarah told me.

"You're kidding" I said. Food could not literally make you smarter. That concept was just not a thing.

"And give you special abilities over time" Nincada said "at six, you should not be able to accidentally hurt your teammates at all, even if you are confused. The effect is called the 'Nontraitor' skill."

Now **that **sounded useful. I did not believe it for so much as a second, but I might as well eat them anyways. I already felt a little hungry. I tasted one first, and realized that it tasted a lot like chocolate. That made no sense, but I wolfed it down all the same. I felt no different at all.

"No change" I said

"Me either" Sarah said

"We should no longer be able to hurt each other" Nincada said

"Shall we test that?" Sarah asked, looking at me. She was already charging a flamethrower.

"No thanks" I said a bit quickly.

We continued on. Sarah's flame lit the way in dark floors. On our second floor, we encountered a pile of little gold coins. "Poké" Sarah explained

"Pardon?"

"It's used to buy things at shops."

"And I haven't heard this yet how?" I asked "i went a week and a half without understanding the monetary system of your world."

_your world…_

i had almost said 'our world'. That scared me. I was losing focus.

"I bought those apples from the kecleon brothers at Crystal Community" Sarah said

"I guess I was letting other things sink in. Like the **change of species**" I said.

"Oh" she said "right".

"And it's just sitting on the floor of a dungeon." I said. "like everything else".

"That's how these places work" she said. "when you are knocked out in a dungeon, all of your Poké disappears. I think that's where the dungeon gets it."

_Now i'm thinking of the dungeon like a living thing. Thanks. _

we met our first enemy. It was a giant purple moth, with big eyes and constantly scattering different colors of dust.

"Let me guess" I said "something to do with the word poison, and then 'moth'"

"Its a Venomoth" Sarah said.

_Okay. getting used to this. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?_

Nincada piped up "if you get anywhere near it, you can get poisoned, paralyzed, or fall right asleep. Sometimes all at once."

Lovely. "Sarah, you're up again"

"Fine with me" she said before torching it.

I almost stupidly walked right into the cloud, but Nincada grabbed me by the leg and stopped me.

"Thank you" I said, suddenly feeling sluggish

"You got a few particles of sleep powder up your nose" Sarah said. "you'll be drowsy for a while."

"Oh." I said, wobbling.

Sarah came to me, and to my embarrassment, pressed herself against me. I could not do anything about it. "you need some support" she said, but I could tell this meant more than that. She was taking advantage of my weakness because I was stupid enough to walk right into a cloud. She was trying to get me interested. How could she still do that, I wondered, when she knew why I needed to go back? I think she understands perfectly how selfish she is being. She just chooses to ignore the facts. I was human, and this was not my home. I realized that I was getting sleepier, and realized that soon, she really would have to carry me, and that would embarrass me to no end.

_Why am I embarrassed? I should say creeped out, but that would not be accurate anymore. Why am I falling so quickly into this fantasy? I need help staying focused. I should tell someone. Talk to this 'Jake' Character I am hearing about. Somebody whom I can trust to keep everything in balance, who can help me get out of here. I will talk to Jake and that Swampert. Perhaps I will talk to Chatot. He should be able to keep Sarah separated from me. Until… I… Ugh! I'm so tired. I'll figure this out later. Right… After… I… Rest…_

…

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

A few minutes after Sarah needlessly began to support him, She was forced to carry him as he fell asleep standing up. That sleep powder he inhaled was not that strong: He should have been fine after a few minutes, but it was like he was sensitive to it.

"Now I have to lug him around" Sarah complained after a few minutes of walking. "do you have any idea how heavy he is?"

I sensed that she was not insulting Caleb, but instead acting like he was still awake; an affectionate joke that was rendered useless by his state. I had helped drape his unconscious form over Sarah, in a way that did not affect Sarah's ability to grab item's from her pack. I stood on top of **him**, getting a better view of the path ahead while being able to grab things from Caleb's pack. I had tried to feed him a heal seed, but anyone who has ever tried to get an unconscious Pokemon to swallow something was wasting their time. I was now included on that list.

It was not long before we met more enemies. I actually got a chance to attack some, because so many were around that Sarah could not take them all out on her own. My technique of spearing a Pokemon from underground was causing damage, but nowhere close to what Flamethrower was doing. My real chance for fame was digging pitfalls faster than other Pokemon could fall into them. as they struggled to get out, Sarah would appear above them, give a sweet smile, and then roast them.

Caleb saw none of it. the guy slept like a Snorlax. I pondered at his inability to combat the sleep powder. It likely had to do with his being a human prior. He was incredibly strong, but he was so easy to affect with sleep or paralysis or poison. Ridiculous strength was not always worth it in my opinion if you cant handle the real threats to your health. Caleb snored away, riding on Sarah's back. his weapon occasionally became a problem, absorbing an attack, and then becoming dangerous for me to be near. one time, we had to drop him and flee as it unleashed a poison wave after absorbing Poisonpowder. Caleb was unharmed by it as always, but several of the bug type enemies nearby got a nasty treatment. after replacing Caleb on Sarah's back, we continued to the sixth floor. There were not too many enemies apparent, but we took no chances. I did recon ahead underground, though it was hard to feel the vibrations of flying Pokemon.

Eventually, we located another room with treasure. A Technical machine that was dusty, and we could not read the label, a cheri berry, and a small bottle of **something** that I could not identify. the label read: 'Max Elixir'.

"Huh" was Sarah's only comment.

"Lets keep that" I said "we might need it".

"Fine with me" she replied "we have plenty of room in our bag".

But before we could do anything else, we were interrupted. a horrible shriek filled the air behind us, down the corridor. as we whirled around to face it, a monstrous flying **thing **roared around the corner. it was giant and gray, with massive wings, horrible looking teeth, and just looked deadlier than anything I had ever seen. another thing I noticed is that unlike the other Pokemon in the dungeon, this one had no cloud in it's eyes. it was awake, it was angry, and it wanted our destruction. I tried to move away so that me and Sarah could get different angles on it, but the huge Pokemon moved impossibly fast. I was about to use scratch, but it rammed me with it's wing incredibly hard. I was flung across the room, hit a wall, and blacked out.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

When I saw Nincada get smashed, I grew very serious. this thing had just hurt my friend. and now it was attacking me, as if it could beat me.

_Give me a break_

But soon enough, I realized that this was no ordinary dungeon Pokemon. it roared at me and spiraled towards me incredibly fast. I made the foolish mistake of trying to burn it. the Pokemon passed right through my flamethrower and slammed me with it's wing. I was flung against the wall, and it hurt, but I was not about to give up. flamethrower was not working.

_what is this thing?!_

There was no time to think. I had to bolt to my left as it went to attack, and still got hit. the thing had turned practically on a Poké coin, and slammed me again.

I got up slowly, favoring my back leg where it had hit me. it hurt so bad, I was not sure I could keep standing long. once again, I was thinking too long. it struck me, this time making it's wings glow white and striking me with a powerful blast of wind. I was thrown clear to the other side of the room. I stumbled, and tried to grab an Oran berry, but it had reached me again. It was just so **fast**. desperately, I tried to use vacuum cut.

_this thing isn't even hurt!_

It struck me again, this time on my side. I crashed against the wall and stayed there for a moment. I tried jumping up, only to slide back down again as my side protested the movements.

_This thing could defeat us. how is it so strong?!_

I pushed through the pain, and stood up. My abilities haven't done me any good this far. what was wrong? With a roar, that Pokemon attacked. But it did not attack me. it flew directly at Caleb instead, and struck him. Caleb went flying against the wall, and flopped down there on his right side, horn buried in the ground. he was **still asleep. **

Nobody hurts Caleb and gets away with it. I was ready to tear this thing apart. It was diving at me again, this time its entire body glowed with an awesome power. it would crush me and end the fight. I could not move. How on earth do I fight something like that?

_Oh, wait. I can't lose. stupid, stupid me. I forgot what I have. _

It was seconds away, and I was just standing there. because knew how to beat this monster. as it prepared to crush me, a powerful azure glow encased me. I felt it's energy slowing down anything around it. I felt the power in the air become suppressed.

The giant Pokemon slammed into me, and nothing happened at all. I did not move, I was completely unaffected. With a surprised grunt, it was stopped cold. It's forward momentum tried to carry it through me, but it simply crashed. I prepared to attack it, but it suddenly flew off and hovered there at the other end of the room, like it was making a decision. I thought it would run off, but that monster roared and soared back into action. I powered up that amazing blue energy, but then, it simply faded. Protect had failed me!

The Pokemon crashed into me with the power of nothing I had ever felt before. I tried to struggle to my feet again, but I was not strong enough.

_We've lost. I've failed._

i was no longer in danger. that creature was flapping toward Caleb now. I think that is what set me off.

_If you hurt Caleb, you will regret it for the rest of your life. _

I stood up, ignoring the pain in my side and legs. I felt my power grow, and I felt an intense energy as I tapped into my reserves of power. I might hurt myself, but there was no choice. it was fight, or watch Caleb get smashed in front of me. No contest. I knew what to do. I began to generate a powerful blue sphere in front of me. the attack was not perfectly centered, and was rather in front of the spot where my horn connected to my head. I could see past it and aim with my left eye. I chose my target.

_Take this, you bastard…_

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was in a field. One that stretched forever. it went on in every direction.

_What is this?_

I felt no breeze, yet the grass swayed. there was no real landscape. the grass was about a foot tall. I looked around, hoping to see something. absolutely nothing at all. just me, and a giant field of grass. what would this place be?

_I fell asleep. this could only be a dream. so why is there nothing? and I don't even dream. Ever. I never have. _

I was going to try and wake myself up when I heard laughter. Laughter and small growls, like children roughhousing with dogs. I listened for a bit. there were two laughing kids and two different animals.

_They are likely Pokemon._

I turned. only two were playing, the laughter and playful growls coming from them both. they were young Absol, much smaller than I was. about the size of puppies. They ran about, pouncing on each other, ETC. it was a good image, but I wondered why it mattered to me. One Absol was colored like me, the other was colored like Sarah. she had a younger voice compared to Sarah, but I could tell that this was the same. the other one could only be me.

_Why am I dreaming of this? This never happened. a week and a half ago I was human. am I being sent a message by my subconscious? perhaps I have begun to be attached to this place. I do like it here, but that is nothing compared to what I need to do. _

They played on. I felt like an adult supervising kids, making sure that they got in no trouble.

_How accurate is that?_

The laughter was infectious. I wanted to find out what they were doing. I shook my head. I needed to **wake up**. I needed to get back to helping the others. I could not wake up. something was keeping me asleep, and that would be the sleep powder. I could not push through it. I could only stand here in an endless field, watching two small Absol jump at each other playfully. Something was wrong with me. I should not be thinking about this. home was my priority.

_This is a dream. this is __**my **__dream. it is mine to control. _

I looked out over the field. I looked through it. this dream was controllable, I simply needed to bring about memories. I thought about home. I thought about the tufts of grass and the juniper trees, the high desert that is saturated by a recent rain. my scene shifted until I was there. for some reason, I could not summon my house into the picture. I could not remember it well enough. That made me very sad. I already was forgetting my home. I remembered the nature around it better. I could not make myself appear human again, much as I yearned to. Looking back at the two Absol pups, I saw they had begun a tug-of-war with one of the many dead sticks littering the place. They seemed unfazed by the change in scenery. When I began to walk through it, those two pups followed me in a random pattern, jumping, playing, but always staying a certain distance away from me.

_Please stop following me. It hurts. _

The Absol pups would not stop playing. their laughter drilled into my ears and their playful growls infected my ability to focus. they were just having a good time. I could not bring myself to interrupt them.

_That black Absol will not be me. I promise. I will find a way home. _

I was not convincing myself. I was not affecting my own judgment with logic. if anything, I seemed to want to rebel against it.

_How dare I act like it would be OK to stay? how dare I let my family and friends down?_

The two Absol continued to laugh and play, this time with a orange frisbee they had found that was a dog toy back home. they flung it around, and tugged at it. All I could do was watch. All I could do was think. Finally, I walked towards them. they noticed me, and looked at me with wider, more innocent eyes than I think I have seen in many years.

"Who are you?" the male asked.

Child Sarah said nothing, just looked at me adoringly.

"I'm Caleb" I said to the male Absol. he continued looking at me, and finally answered: "i have never seen you here before".

Could an image in a dream really have its own memories? I did not know. but I wanted to keep talking. it felt good to talk. this was a dream: only I really heard what was said.

"What is your name?" I asked, sure I knew the answer.

"My name is Caleb, too" he said quickly, earnestly. Child me was carefree, ready to play a game that I should not play. but he pleaded with his eyes in a way I never could in my state. Child Sarah pleaded with her blue eyes as well. I needed to find a way awake. I needed to help Sarah and Nincada and save the two nidorans. but there was no waking up. For once, I really wondered if I would succeed in getting back. there was no guarantee, and I had been acting like there was some way home. What if there was no answer? What would I become if I stayed? would I become this, a playful, childish being, frolicking around? specifically playing with Sarah?

_If I give up, I can never forgive myself. it would haunt me for the rest of my life. my biggest what if. My biggest regret. _

But in that moment, I realized that no matter what goal I had, I was not getting out of this dream without time. I realized that there was no reason to say no to this little pup, this little version of me. He was what I might have been if I had lived here my whole life. Right now, he wanted me to join their game. I felt awkward. what sort of person did that make me? I hesitate to play with a child because I am too busy worrying about something I cannot control. I needed to let go for once. just forget what I don't have for once.

"Of course" I told Child Me. "Of course ill join you".

He looked at me like I had acted unexpectedly. then, he smiled broadly. he raced back to join Child Sarah, and I followed him at a walk.

We played for a while. I know it was all in my imagination; a dream that I could decide my actions in. they kept charging me, jumping on me. I felt like a parent to these little dream kids. two people that I needed to take care of. My dream even included exhaustion. after way too long of getting pounced on, I simply lay down and rested. when I closed my eyes in my dream, I wondered if I would wake up. Nothing happened.

_How long will I be here? do I care?_

The Child versions of me and Sarah still wanted to play, but I just let them charge each other for a while again. Watching them, I felt longing. I had not much of a childhood. not much time was spent running around with good friends, wrestling and playing. I had friends of course, but I was always the distant one. the logical one. the one of the group who took on a challenge whilst the others talked about sports or games or did you go to the party last night? This was these two. a childhood I could have had but did not let myself have. In the interest of success for me and those around me, I chose the life of adulthood. To be fair, I was treated as an adult. people shook hands with me when I was in fourth grade. adults congratulated me on my attempts at a science fair, or a school project. My attentiveness. My ability to understand adults better than the children around me. I now wondered if that was worth it. The two young Absol moved me. I wanted to stay in this dream where worries do not exist. where I could do what I liked. I wondered if I would get my wish.

I found out seconds later. my dream suddenly changed. we were still in the desert, but the two children in front of me had changed drastically. they were grown, Me and Sarah.

_they are fighting each other._

A wail of pain caught my attention, and I saw Sarah get tossed across the field and into a tree. I was there, having struck her, and I was here, still lying down. still on the ground. I feared for them. I wanted them to stop.

"**ENOUGH!**" I shouted at the two of them. they both turned on me, without anger in their eyes. it was fear I saw. the same fear I felt. I immediately felt an invisible blow to my belly and felt myself go flying. The two of them rushed to me, looking over at me. they tried to ask if I was hurt.

"Don't worry about me" I groaned. "please. just stop fighting" .

They looked at me, and despite that I could distantly hear the sounds of a battle, the screaming of anger and pain, I was worried about these two. why? why was I so intent on keeping pokemon in my dreams safe?

_Its because they are children. they don't know what is going on. they only reflect what I am feeling outside._

I thought of them as nice children again, peaceful, playful. and my dream complied. the two of them were afraid still, but I got up and went to them. My very presence calmed them. and while the battle erupted around us, I told them: "This is only a dream. Something you can wake up from. This cannot hurt you."

"Who's dream is it?" Child Me asked.

I thought about it. I felt bad about it. I wanted these two to think of themselves as living. They were alive to me at any rate; they had shown themselves to be a little more than I could understand. A little more than dreams. The kids looked up at me expectantly.

"Both of yours" I lied. "You share this dream".

They smiled and drew close to me, and everything started to fade.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

My Water Pulse struck that huge Pokemon and sent him flying onto a wall before the sphere promptly exploded. Caleb was safe for the moment, and i was the target again. with yet another roar, it began to race towards me sideways, the tip if the wing facing downward now had glowing misshapen material around it. with a **Boom-Boom-Boom** the glowing items turned to stones and slammed together, creating a massive spike.

_Stone Edge_

I controlled my fear and prepared another Water Pulse, shooting it straight at its ugly open maw. the explosion drove the Pokemon backwards, the Dangerous Stone Edge breaking apart. I was feeling pretty triumphant when that Pokemon roared at me. It told me it wasn't done yet.

_What the hey?! Fall already!_

At this point, i just started shooting it repeatedly with water pulse. It went on for many minutes until it stopped getting up, badly damaged and out cold. I did not even know what it was. I felt a breeze of sorts, and i suddenly felt stronger. my wounds did not feel so painful.

I had leveled up. i felt my physical body grow stronger and heal, and i felt my strength return. i felt a power that i recognized based off of stories i had heard. i let Vacuum Cut fade away from my memory and accepted the new attack. i felt powerful. unstoppable. unbeatable. i had taken down this large Pokemon, and saved the mission. I walked over to Caleb and saw that he was no longer snoring. he would wake soon. i wanted to be near him when he did, but i then remembered with a guilty shock that i had forgotten Nincada.

I raced to the small Pokemon, who was knocked out cold. his body was badly damaged by the crushing Wing Attack. i was not able to send him home with Caleb asleep, and we would have to wait for him to wake up. i brought Nincada over to Caleb's sleeping form and laid down next to him. his breathing was much quieter, and his sleep was finally fading away. His eyes opened slowly.

"Morning sleepyhead" i said from my position lying next to him.

He looked at me, right next to him, and blinked the rest of sleep off. His eyes widened a bit, but he did not leave. he simply looked at me. His eyes were softer, and sad.

_What happened to him?_

He then said: "i'm sorry, Sarah" and got up. he began to walk away.

"wait!" i called "Nincada is hurt!"

He spun around, and noticed the unconscious form next to me. he raced over, and said "we don't have any reviver seeds. i need to send him back.

"Do it" i said, trying to get up. My legs acted up again, all of them. i collapsed, my legs and side were killing me.

"What happened to you two?!" he exclaimed, finally figuring out how to send Nincada back, and used the badge to teleport Nincada.

"That" i wheezed, gesturing over to that large rock pokemon.

"You forgot to use Protect again?"

"At first, but we would not have won if i had not used Protect and Water pulse." i said, and noticed that Caleb had not noticed the injuries on his belly at all. he would if i mentioned that he got hit. I let out a whimper of pain involuntarily.

"You need these" Caleb proclaimed, pushing Oran berries over to me. Three of them. I wolfed them down and recovered a bit, but no basic oran berry could heal the damage to my side from that Take Down. I groaned as i stood, but i could stand. I stumbled over to the other items that were in the room initially. i wondered if the Technical Machine was also for me, but as i cleared the dusty surface with a gust of wind i forced through the air, it read: Swords Dance.

That was Caleb's, no doubt. i had heard of that move, and it was beyond lifesaving in a serious fight. with Caleb awake, i could no longer pretend that it took ten seconds for the Technical Machine to work. in fact, they worked instantly.

"Swords Dance?" Caleb said, walking up to me. he had a edge to his voice that took me a moment to identify. He was **afraid**. "it doesn't actually involve dancing, right?" he asked worriedly.

I laughed at him, he was just so silly. "i don't know" i said teasingly. "lets find out".

He shrank away, but i just tossed the thing at his head. it whacked against his skull and taught him the move instantly. he breathed a sigh of relief. "no, i don't have to dance to make it work" he said. "thank goodness".

I laughed at him again and said "we should continue."

"Yeah…" he replied.

We progressed to the seventh floor, out destination somewhere here. we were attacked by more enemies, but Caleb was here this time. I was in no shape to do anything quickly, just fire the occasional flamethrower. Caleb swung his massive weapon around, absorbing attacks and basically destroying any enemies that crossed our path. Crystal Star would not have done that to that giant flying Pokemon, it was too strong, but we faced weaklings from that point forward. soon enough, we found the two Nidorans, huddled in a corner, scared out of their wits. Caleb headed over to them. "its all right" he said soothingly. "we will get you out of here".

After they were done thanking us, Caleb sent them home with his badge.

"Should we continue?" i asked.

He shuddered. "no" he said, and promptly activated the badges ability to transport us back. we found ourselves standing in our beds, and the sun was setting. The day was basically over. We checked on nincada, who was being nursed back to health by Chimecho. He was fine in time for dinner. Caleb marveled at how easy it was to fix up Nincada, despite the injuries that he sustained. Chimecho's heal bell move restored us as well. and at dinner, all of us chowed down our food. the only berries Caleb savored this time was the Pecha berries.

* * *

**Thank you all for reading through this chapter. i know it was longer than the others, but i cannot decide what length to make my chapters. Over time, they should become more consistent. Please remember that you can send me feedback on my work if you want. i would appreciate constructive feedback to improve different issues. Thank you all. **

**-Hyperjade**


	8. Chapter Eight: Pseudo Expedition

Chapter 8: Pseudo Expedition

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

There was a commotion in the second floor of the guild this morning. As we walked into the scene, we saw people crowded by the regular job board. The center of my attention today however, was the outlaw board. Specifically, the two Pokemon in front of it. Seemingly unaffected by the commotion, the Raichu and Swampert that Sarah had identified as Team Thunderwave looked over the board, and I kid you not, took seven outlaw jobs all set in Mt. Horn. To my extreme embarrassment, I noticed that once again, the powerful pokemon that we took down was one of the outlaws. The name of the pokemon was Aerodactyl.

"Oh dear" I said aloud. "It seems we messed up again".

The two Pokemon turned to me. The Raichu was apparently the human, Jake.

"What's up?" the Swampert asked.

"Are you Caleb?" Jake asked.

"Yes, my name is Caleb." I said. "And we were just at Mt. Horn. We fought a powerful Aerodactyl, defeated it, and just left it there, thinking it was another dungeon pokemon. We continued on to save the two Nidoran that we were supposed to, but if I had known that it was an outlaw, we could have brought it back."

"You took down an Aerodactyl" Swampert repeated, as if it was not so believable.

"I wanted to talk to you" Jake now said "Your friends told me that you did not lose your memories".

"Well, Sarah took him down" I said, and they widened their eyes "I was asleep, and Nincada was knocked out. yes, Jake, I retained my memories of my old life."

"By herself? With Flamethrower?" Swampert asked, still doubtful.

"Water pulse" I told him.

"What was it like being a human?" Jake asked wistfully.

"Humans are bipedal, meaning they walk on two legs. They have an average height of Five foot ten where I come from. They all look very different and unique because of the manner of reproduction. I'm sure you don't want to know about that. Humans are pretty much weaklings compared to any pokemon. their bodies don't lock up and stiffen when they are knocked out, and are very easy to injure and kill compared to pokemon. The sight of blood is not rare in the human world, because of how easy it is for one to be injured. They have different hair colors including black, yellow, brown and red. Personally, my hair was brown. They actually have little hair, most of it growing in top of our heads. The rest of our bodies is mostly hairless. Our hands are very adept at grabbing and manipulating things, and we are very accomplished with technology." I abruptly stopped talking. I was running on.

"I see" Jake said, fully attentive. Swampert's eyes, however, had practically glazed over.

"Did you remember anything at all when you arrived?" I asked.

"My name" he said, "and the fact that I was human before".

My eyes narrowed. that did not fit. The basic idea of memory loss is that things are either lost or blurred. If most things are lost, the rest is badly blurred and recollection of the remaining memories was very difficult. "How easy was it to remember these things?" I asked.

"I could remember them easily" jake said slowly, noticing that it meant something.

"What does that mean?" Swampert asked me.

I repeated the general idea of Memory loss to Jake, and explained that natural memory loss does not follow that pattern.

Jake bristled and started throwing off sparks. "are you calling me a liar?" he challenged.

I was unfazed. "I am telling you that your memory loss could not have been caused simple natural trauma. something else caused it, or perhaps you buried the memories in your subconscious. The concept of you lying was not an option. it is particularly difficult to lie about memory loss."

Jake stopped sparking, and calmed down. "Something else?" he asked.

"I am telling you that those symptoms are extremely rare in natural circumstances, and it is extremely unlikely that it happened naturally. it still could have."

"Did you have questions for me?" he asked.

"Have you had any experiences where you remembered places?"

"Several, when they had to do with Time Gears".

I blinked "pardon?"

"Time Gears" Jake repeated "We had to retrieve them to restore temporal tower".

Temporal Tower. That sounded intriguing. I wondered what was important about it.

_Temporal. Time gears. Perhaps time was in danger? But that makes no sense at all. Where I come from, time isn't controlled by anything. _

As I thought that however, I wondered how much I actually knew about my own world. Was time controlled here? In this Pokemon world?

"Did you have any moments of recognition that had nothing to do with time gears?" I asked.

"None at all, but the dimensional scream has been helpful before" he replied, as if I could possibly know what a dimensional scream was, or that he could use it.

"Explain that to me" I said. He seemed to be taken aback by my sudden need for haste.

"Its a rare ability based on contact with other pokemon or things" he said. "I sometimes black out and receive sounds or images from throughout time".

I had never heard of any humans with that ability. If he could do it based off of contact, the perhaps he could see a future for me. "If you make contact with me" I began "would you see where I have to go to get home?"

"It's random, but I can try" he responded, and then moved his tail over to my head and touched it to the piece on my forehead. For several seconds, nothing happened. To my surprise, Jake swooned and almost fell. Swampert caught him, and laid him down softly. He twitched in his trance, and the whole thing lasted about a minute. Finally, his eyes shot open, and he jumped to his feet. To my confusion, he stared at me fearfully. I wondered what I could possibly have done in the future to strike fear into him. he began stammering.

"What is it?" I asked, worried now.

He could not say it. He stopped trying to talk and just stared at me, with an incredible fear in his eyes. Frankly, he looked like he was going to faint again.

_If this powerful team leader, who was about to take apart seven powerful outlaws, is so frightened, what will I do?!_

"Please" I begged. "I need to know how I will get home".

He looked into my eyes, his new fear of me so apparent there, like a cornered animal. "I don't know" he lied.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

As Caleb went to chat with Team Thunderwave, I secretly hoped that he would find nothing about how to get home. This was particularly horrible of me, I realized, but there was no chance that I would let him go. Not him. Caleb was mine, and I would do my best to keep it that way. Nincada and I walked to the other board, the one surrounded by Pokemon. The source of the commotion was apparently a new type of job. It described a difficult quest for treasure that required three teams to get because you needed to find three gates at once. Apparently you needed three badges to open the gates, and when all were present, one at each gate, they should open. Then, the treasure was up for grabs, split between the three teams. It was not even a proper mission, more like a treasure hunt. Pokemon were being nominated for the exploration of Waterfall Cave.

"Hello, Mightyena" I said, noticing how his team was standing in front with another team. They had apparently been nominated to help in the process of retrieving treasure. The Pokemon seemed in the process of nominating one more team.

Mightyena looked over at me, and motioned for me to come closer. I did, and he said "The guild is preparing for this job here. I hear that your takedown of Aerodactyl caused quite the uproar. Its likely that you will be nominated as the third team here."

That was news worth hearing. I needed to tell caleb not to get any jobs until we knew for certain. "So where is this dungeon?" I asked.

"In a waterfall not far to the northeast" he replied, and I noticed how cautious he was being with me, answering quickly, and in short terms. He was worried about offending me. What Caleb had done worked properly. I wanted to smile, but this attitude of his was in a fragile state. I needed to be careful with him for a bit.

_Wait a second. Waterfall. Northeast. _

"Mightyena" I said "You wouldn't happen to be talking about that waterfall that's coming out of a mountain-like structure right next to the plains?".

"that's the one" he replied.

"We rested near the entrance. I had no idea there was a dungeon there".

"It's right through the waterfall".

_Through the waterfall?! Well, that's not happening. _

"Nincada is a ground type" I said. "We won't be able to go there without hurting him badly."

He seemed taken aback by that. Then he smiled. "Im sure that we can figure something out."

"How? its a **waterfall. **It's moving incredibly fast. You can't possibly get an opening through it before it closes again."

"Well, that's not the best attitude to have, Sarah!" said a voice behind me.

Well, that scared me real bad. I practically jumped right out of my fur. Wigglytuff had managed to sneak up behind me. I was and **Absol**! I should be able to tell when somebody was behind me and potentially trying to destroy me utterly. I was certain that if I stepped out of line, I was doomed to be deafened by that brutal Hyper Voice. Maybe the guy had healed my hearing afterwards, but I don't know if he would have if Caleb had not asked him to. I am sure that the guy was just waiting to blast me again.

Wigglytuff was all smiles. "We can find a way to get through the wall of water without hurting Nincada! I'm sure of it!"

"How do you think you can do that?" I asked "You can't stop a waterfall".

"You don't have to, friend!" he told me "Nincada can use dig to burrow in from a different location!"

_Oh. Right. It's a cave. _

Well, that made me the dumbest person in the room. Of course Nincada could just dig into the place. It was a good thing Caleb hadn't seen me acting like such a goofball.

"I seem to have interrupted something important" Caleb's voice made me shudder. So he saw that too. who else was going to share in the Judgement of Sarah? apparently the whole crowd. They had stopped and were now looking at me and Caleb.

"Have you guys come to a decision?" I asked innocently.

Mightyena snorted with laughter, and Caleb was suppressing a smile. Even Nincada seemed to be shaking, holding in laughter. Wigglytuff was the one to speak up for me. "well?" he asked "have you decided on the third team to adventure Waterfall Cave and discover the treasure?"

"ABSOLUTELY" Loudred yelled, causing everyone but Wigglytuff to flinch. I guess that the guildmaster could handle a little noise, having used hyper voice.

Loudred went to say more, but Sunflora stopped him. "We have voted that the team to accompany Team Rush and Team Ivy will be none other than our new recruits, Team Edge!"

Exactly what Mightyena said would happen. I wondered why they picked an inexperienced team to go on such a trip.

_Could we really have made such an impression that others think we are that special? So I took down a flying rock. OK, it was a __**tough **__flying rock, but still. Now we are on a job that me may or may not be able to handle. _

I looked at the other team, Team Ivy. they consisted of two Tangela flanking a Pokemon I had never seen before. I was about to ask what her name was, but I was interrupted by Chatot. He flew up to us. "You three teams should expect to be gone for several days, despite the short distance between here and Waterfall Cave" he chirped "take whatever materials can fit in your bag. You have today to get ready, and we will see you off tomorrow. That will be all".

Nobody moved an inch. Chatot noticed. "I said that will be all" he said, glaring at the Pokemon surrounding us. One by one, they got out of our way. I walked to this Team Ivy, and Caleb went to speak with Mightyena. "hello" I said. "what is your name?"

The Pokemon stood up straighter. "I am Servine" she said. "I hope that his trip will not get you hurt". She had no faith in us as a group. I wasn't OK with that. She looked at me sympathetically, and then walked over to where the other group leaders were speaking about the new mission. I caught Caleb saying: "Frankly, we don't have enough items to fill our bag fully". One of the Tangela spoke to me. "Don't mind Servine" he said. "She had faith in everyone, but she hides it in case they let her down. That way she does not feel responsible."

I turned to the two of them. "Doesn't she realize the problems that can cause?"

"We think that she knows that perfectly well." they said. I realized that they spoke together, at the same time. "Servine has fears, just like everyone else".

I looked back towards Servine,who was now involved in the conversation with Caleb and Mightyena. They spoke like they had known each other for a while. Caleb could do that, figuring out people. The other two could easily have met before. "Do you two know what to expect from the cave?" I asked.

"Of course" they said "mostly water types, and some Tangela can be found there too. That is where Servine recruited us". I grimaced. Nincada would have difficulty even if he got in properly. He spoke up from on my back. "I'll be fine, Sarah. I'll just dig ahead and warn you of enemies".

"Thank you Nincada" I said. Then, I whispered to him "lets confuse these guys. You can tell me how many Pokemon are in a room by tapping my foot from underground. They will be surprised when I suddenly know what to expect. Caleb could probably figure it out, but team Ivy should be very confused".

"Its not like you to play pranks" he whispered back. "Is this worth it?" I looked at the team leaders and their friends. "Absolutely" I answered.

⻤Nincada's POV⻤

It was interesting how quickly that day went by, considering how little was actually done. Mightyena had an excess of berries in storage, and loaned us a bunch to fill up our bag. Servine kept pretending that she had no faith in our abilities, despite the story of how we took down an Aerodactyl.

_We? I was unconscious, and Caleb was taking a nap! Sarah did all the work._

And now, Sarah was planning a joke on the others. Perhaps this was her retribution to Caleb and my joke so many days ago? Perhaps she just wanted to teach Servine a lesson. That was ridiculous, as nothing would be gained from tricking Servine. Maybe Sarah wanted to appear capable in front of Servine, even knowing that Servine's lack of faith was a shield of lies.

We walked as a group to treasure town, where Pokemon were looking at us in awe this time, instead of fearing Sarah. It was a nice change. I wondered if an Aerodactyl was really so tough to beat. I had not seen the battle, and Sarah had boiled it down to a potential massacre with a turning point that involved water pulse and protect. That did not help me here. It was also possible that they looked at the others in awe instead. They certainly did give out an aura of power. Caleb and Mightyena walked in front, both of their powers obvious to everyone. Servine and her Tangela friends were right behind them, Servine looking as authentic and authoritative as possible. Mightyena's friends walked with us a bit further back. Machoke and Bastiodon were a bit behind Sarah, and I was of course on top of Sarah's back. Machoke towered above most of us, but he honestly drew the least attention of all of us. Sarah was too noticeable for the Pokemon walking beside us to have much of an impact on the Pokemon we passed.

"I would like to stop here" Servine said, pointing to Xatu Appraisal. She led the way now, pulling three small yellow heavy looking boxes from her bag. I recalled Bidoof telling us that Xatu would open those things for us, but I was unsure of what those boxes looked like until now.

She stopped at the counter. "hello, Xatu old friend" she greeted the odd looking Pokemon. "I would like to open these Deluxe Boxes now. here."

Servine gave Xatu the boxes and 450 Poké. Xatu said nothing, just turned around, and the boxes floated with him. He used some sort of psychic power, and all three boxes clicked open. The boxes floated back to the counter, now open. Servine pulled out three seeds. "Reviver seeds" she said. "Team Ivy has plenty, but Caleb and Mightyena should take some."

"We have reviver seeds, too." Mightyena said "Team Edge should take two. I will take this one". He grabbed one seed from Servine, and Caleb took two. Both leaders put the seeds in their bags.

We continued towards Kangaskhan storage, where Kangaskhan was standing, ready to help. "I hear that you nine are on a multi-team mission!" she said. Where did she get that information? "What can I do for you today?"

Servine stepped forward "I would like to withdraw Five heal seeds and one sitrus berry" she said. "And I would like to store these" she pulled out at least nine more boxes, these ones different in size and color.

"Of course, sweetie" Kangaskhan said, taking the boxes to the back. when she returned, she had 5 seeds and one yellow berry that must have been a sitrus berry. Servine distributed the seeds among our teams, one for team Ivy, and two for team Rush and team Edge. She handed the sitrus berry to Caleb. Sarah was not too happy about how Servine was so generous. "How dare she…" she muttered so softly that only I heard her.

_Oh…_

Sarah was talking about how generous Servine was being to **Caleb**. If Sarah thought that Servine was moving in on Caleb, there would be some major issues in the future. "Sarah" I said quickly "she is only trying to help us in the dungeon". Sarah did not relax for a bit, and I was afraid she would torch Servine right there. Finally, she seemed to get herself under control. She still looked uncertain. "Fine" she muttered. Sarah moved closer to Caleb anyways.

_This may end badly. _

Later, we had returned to the guild, and were discussing tactics. Caleb told the others about Sarah's abilities, and Sarah told them about Caleb's weapon and it's ridiculously powerful (and sometimes dangerous) capabilities. Servine said: "that's quite the drawback if used incorrectly". "It only really becomes a problem if it takes in a poison attack while Caleb is sleeping or knocked out." I replied.

The conversation eventually died, us waiting for dinner now. The meal room would be packed, and some would have to eat in a second session. I struck up a conversation with Diglett underground. "What do you know about Waterfall cave?" I asked him.

"Nothing much. I have never been there. For obvious reasons." he answered.

That was about it. We basically just waited while the sun shone into the window. We had a moment of excitement as Caleb did not know what it meant that the job boards were being updated, and when I flipped at an impossible speed, it smacked Caleb in the face and sent him flying. It was honestly rather comical, though at the time we were worried. He appeared fine, and sounded rather bored.

_That seems to be his shield. he fakes boredom to mask pain. _

Sarah made certain to be the one to help him up, stopping Servine from bringing Caleb to his feet with her vines. Servine noticed the odd behavior, and her eyes narrowed.

Dinner was called. We ate. Caleb took his time with his food again, stalling the others. Basic routine stuff. Team Ivy and Team Rush left the guild to go to their base. We went to bed in the guild, and sleep took time to come. "Good night" Sarah said, before lying down. Caleb watched the water outside the window, which confused me. Quietly, I went to him. "Caleb" I said "you should sleep".

"how can I sleep?" he asked. I thought he was excited by the trip to come, but his expression was so grim "When Jake used an ability called the dimensional scream to see my future, he was scared halfway to death by what he saw. Then, he lied to me about it. It has something to do with me. Something I do. Sleep is not coming anytime soon."

Okay, that did not sound good. Yet he seemed unfazed when he greeted us at the board. Was he so good at hiding his emotions?

"Go to bed" I ordered. "You have a long day ahead of you, and without sleep you will be useless. Go to sleep."

He smiled a little bit. Then, He walked to his bed. I watched him lay on his right side once again, and then turn over, not even making a sound of frustration this time.

_Tonight will be a long night for all of us. _

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

When I finally got comfortable, I fell asleep faster than I should have. It was almost like being pulled into sleep. I felt something different underneath me: sticks and dirt. I was back in my dream world. I opened my eyes and stood up. Everything was the same as I had left it. The junipers and the sagebrush, though I had made the mistake of making it 100% realistic, and I realized that the juniper trees would take all the water from the sagebrush. I looked at one of the dead bushes and forced it to grow.

_You are your most powerful in your dreams._

I caused the rest of them to grow, becoming the white-green of sagebrush. As I did so, there was a commotion behind me. Two small Absol rushed to me, and immediately pounced. The crash was rather weak, and I really did not have to move. I turned to greet them. Child me and Child Sarah were sitting there, waiting for me to say something.

"Hey, you two" I said. these guys had made an impact on me last time. I wondered if I really made them up in my dreams or if they were just there. The two of them were so Lifelike that I was certain that I had not created them.

"You're back!" Child me said enthusiastically. Child Sarah said nothing, just stared at me adoringly. I wondered why she was so quiet here. She would laugh as she played with Child me, but she did not speak. Why doesn't she speak?

She did then, startling me. "Have you come to play with us again?"

So she did speak, I had simply not heard her yet. She was fidgeting in her sitting position, and ready to move around. Again, I realized that this was a place where worrying was useless. I needed to relax. "Of course" I told her. The two of them cheered and went on tackling me. These two kids would wear me out quickly, and I played a trick on them. The two of them suddenly found themselves away from me by about ten feet. They charged me again, but I made the distance between me and them longer by will.

"How are you doing that?!" they asked, confused.

"I can manipulate the terrain" I told them.

Child me blinked, much like I do. "What?"

"I can change the surroundings" I said "like I changed the field to the high desert".

They stared at me, astounded. "I told you that was him!" Child me said to Child Sarah.

She giggled, and asked "how?"

"By thought. I can control this place" I answered.

"I thought this was **our** dream" Child me said, and I recognized my own sense of suspicion. I had lied to them there, but I should play along. I wanted to keep these two happy.

"Of course it is" I said "i'm here because you two don't need to control your dreams. I can do it for you. where would you like to go?"

They immediately perked up at the sound of that. "The mountains!" Child me said.

"No! A lake!" Child Sarah exclaimed.

I smiled. "I can do both".

I gathered my memories of the place, dropping the buildings and people, and recreated my memories of my favorite national park: Crater Lake. We stood at the lip of the crater. The two kids gasped in awe at the scene. "Amazing!" they cried as they began to run down the slope to the water.

"be careful! The water is very cold!" I exclaimed. "Don't go swimming!"

They did not listen to me, and before they dropped into the water, I forced the water to heat up. As they plunged in, it was very warm. They swam back to a point where they could get out, as I bounded over to them. "I guess you were wrong about it being cold, huh?" Child me said. "I had to heat it up before you guys got yourself hurt" I responded. "Please don't hurt yourselves."

"we won't!" the promised rapidly, without thinking about it. As they threw themselves into the lake again, I realized that they were children, despite being in my dream. They listened to nobody.

They swam well, with no chance of drowning. There was nothing but water below them, as I did not know exactly what was beneath Crater Lake. As they played in the water, I considered what I would do if they were thrown into real danger. Danger I could not expunge with my power over my own dreams. I shook my head. What danger was here? None that I could see. I had established myself as Their protector. It felt good to have somebody to take care of, something I had missed so far in life. Eventually, they seemed to tire out, and I moved us back to the High desert. The children were soaking wet. "That was so fun!" Child Sarah exclaimed, running over to me and promptly jumping at me. We played for a while again, me considering them as children in need of entertainment, and they looked at me as their magical dream guardian. by the time, they got tired and took a nap, I was soaking wet as well. I dried the water and let them rest. I climbed onto a stump that I generated in the landscape, and laid down. I had gotten used to this body.

_How long before I become human again? Will I have trouble walking again?_

I was focusing on outside things **again**. I shook my head. Here, these two kids were all that mattered, because they were the only constant. I am not sure how long I waited, but eventually they woke up again. I was pretending to sleep. They stalked up to me, but they were terrible at it. Sticks broke under them, and they were noisy. When they pounced, I rolled right off of the log and stood there as they landed on top of it. They started a game of chase, with me being the target. eventually I jumped to a juniper branch that was thick enough to hold me. "No fair!" Child Sarah said. "how can we get you if you're up there?" Child me asked.

I smiled at them, and then my dream started to fade. I dropped down, ready to give a proper goodbye this time. I am not sure why I was so certain that these guys were more than dreams.

They cried out in alarm "you're fading!" Child me exclaimed.

"I have to go for now" I told them. "I will be back. I will try to find you whenever I can. Try not to hurt yourselves while i'm gone". I smiled at them. They came closer until they were brushing up against me. Like kids. Like people that needed me. It was a good feeling. "Goodbye for now" I said, as everything faded to black.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I woke up before Loudred had a chance to wake me. I looked at Caleb. He was smiling in his sleep, and occasionally he would act like he was concentrating. Caleb once told me that he does not have dreams. Was he starting to?

Nincada surfaced next to me "You're up early" he said.

"Yeah. I guess I am. Look at that, Caleb's smiling. I have never seen him smile so much".

Nincada looked at Caleb, then back at me. "What do you think he is dreaming about?".

"I can only hope he is dreaming about me" I answered, and then I laid back down.

_I should try to get as much sleep as I can. _


	9. Chapter Nine: Waterfall Chaos

Chapter 9: Waterfall Chaos

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

"Good morning, everyone" I said to Servine and Mightyena.

"Good morning, Caleb" Mightyena said.

Servine was not so polite. "We should start right away if we want to be in the cave by noon". By noon? When was that goal established?

"Very well" Mightyena said, also apparently confused by her sudden need for haste. Servine made no sense. Her lack of faith was a shield in case she was betrayed or whatever. She also seemed not to want to rush yesterday when we had basically lazed around all day. What was up with her? "Lets go then" Mightyena told his team members. I went to do the same with mine, but before I turned around I sensed them right behind me. They were ready to go.

"Looks like we are on our way" I told them. "Shall we go?"

We walked down the road back to the fields where Sarah had failed to use shadow ball properly. She evidently remembered as well; Her steps were a little heavier. Nincada rode on Sarah's back again, but we were moving much slower than normal because Team Ivy's Tangela were not the fastest. Machoke and Bastiodon had a few difficulties as well. The Tangela's form confused me: All I could see was a mass of vines surrounding two eyes and they had two feet. Their walking speed was not impressive, but when trees came along they used vines to move along the trees very quickly.

Machoke and Bastiodon were having trouble again, and I spoke up. "Servine, we should slow down".

She looked at me like I was crazy, and I gestured to the two behind the group. She watched the two of them, and eventually slowed down a bit. "Thanks" Bastiodon said in his very low, almost metallic voice. Speaking of odd looking, Bastiodon was basically a grown up Shieldon, but with a more rectangular shaped face that doubled as a shield. Crashing against him would not be fun.

"You're welcome" I answered, keeping my eyes on the path. I had already had an embarrassing trip on the way here that put me right into a tree (ow). Noticing that Servine was speeding up again, I shot to the front with Quick attack and spoke to her directly.

"We must keep a pace that Machoke and Bastiodon can handle" I said in a tone that showed how important this was. "We cannot move faster than that, because we need **everybody** in our mission".

That got her attention, thankfully, and she slowed down even more. She looked at me, expecting me to say something. I looked right back, not willing to give her that. Why would I speak when there was nothing more to say?

More and more rocks showed up in the ground, and eventually the area changed to rock and dirt. Trees and grass became minimal again, and the two Tangela began to slow down. Servine was forced to slow down more, though she looked unhappy about it. The sun was not directly overhead, and we had maybe an hour before noon. We came to a river, its banks surrounded by soft grass, and Nincada said "Stop".

Everyone but Servine obliged, and Servine had basically leaped over the River with quick attack, two vines from her shoulders ready to catch her in case she did not make it all the way.

"Well?" she demanded "Come on!"

"What is it, Nincada?" I asked the little guy. Then, I noticed that Bastiodon and Machoke looked very tired. The two of them must have used a lot of energy running. Mightyena rushed over to them. "Are you two alright?" he asked them.

Machoke and Bastiodon were surprised by their leader's change of heart. I was too, really. I had expected the effect of my little mind game to be far less drastic than that. They told him that they were just tired, and that they would like to rest. almost half of us obliged immediately, but Mightyena, me, Sarah, and Nincada did not. Servine made her way back across. "What is the meaning of this?!" she demanded.

Sarah whirled on her. "You happened" Sarah said harshly. "Why are you in such a hurry? These guys have been tired for an hour! you just run on."

Both Servine and I recoiled at her sudden ferocity. Then again, she was absolutely correct. The two of them had a standoff before Servine apparently realized that a fight with Sarah was not an option for her. She stalked off past me. "You need to assert more control over your team" she said "They have a problem with authority".

"Sarah is correct, Servine".

She looked at me in surprise. "How can you-".

I interrupted her. "Look at Mightyena's partners; You have run them to the ground. It is not because they are too slow or too weak. It is because you were too busy trying to be **fast **that you have not noticed or cared about the state of your own group. Servine, when we move as a group, we are a **group**. One big team. Look at your own teammates. The Tangela are tired as well, and you haven't even **noticed**".

She looked stunned.

_Good. Figure it out. _

She looked me over, realizing that I was not some weak creature that had been placed under her command. I had become the one in charge simply by noticing that something was wrong. In this situation, I was the powerful one. I could make the decisions, and most of the team would obey. This was not because I was in control, but because my decisions led to the healthiest Pokemon possible in time for a dungeon. "You did not even figure how we would get over that water, did you? No amount of vines can get Bastiodon across, and Sarah cant use quick attack, and Nincada is too terrified of my sword to ride on me. Furthermore, I have no faith that I can make that jump even using quick attack. We must find another way across. We will not reach **your **deadline, and that's **OK**. We must go a way that we **can **go, and at a **speed **we can go. This is not a request, Servine."

She was about to interrupt me somewhere around the word 'deadline', but she shut her mouth as I continued to pick her logic apart. I wondered what she would say. Servine just looked at me, appalled by my sudden harshness. "Get some rest" I said sternly. "You look as tired as they do".

She really did look exhausted. After a few moments of absolute silence, she said "All right" and went to join the others where they were laying down in the sun, except for Nincada, who was partially buried under the shade of a tree. After some moments of watching all of them settle down, I looked at the river and tried to decide if there was a way across here.

The water rushed by really fast. Swimming would not work. Honestly, I was not sure how to swim in this form yet. A vine bridge could get everyone across except for Bastiodon, but I was **not **leaving anyone behind. I searched the nearby area. I got lucky. There was a tall, thick tree growing practically on the shoreline of the river. I walked over to it and inspected it. It was growing at an angle, hanging over the water. If I cut it down, it may be long enough for a bridge. I checked the tree: no Pokemon seemed to be in it. Normal energy began building in my horn.

_Lets hope I can do this. _

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

**Ching!**

**Creeeaaaaaak…**

**BOOM!**

My eyes flew open.

_What was that!?_

I shot to my feet and viewed the group. All were awake now, and the only ones not on their feet were Bastiodon and Machoke, who were slowly getting up.

_They really are tired._

I felt bad. I had pushed these two faster than they could go. One person was missing from the group. Where was Caleb? I whirled and saw a huge cloud of smoke originating from the river on **both **sides.

"Caleb!" Sarah rushed forward. I followed, quickly overtaking Sarah, and we dived into the cloud of dust. I could not see, but Sarah said: "Over there!" and we rushed to the center of the cloud of dust. Caleb was in the process of yanking his horn out of something. Had we been attacked? Had Caleb just defended us?

"Hi" he said to us once the dust began to clear. It was a casual greeting, like he had passed me on the road by chance. Was he that unimpressed by what happened?

"Uh… Hello" was all I could say. He had efficiently disarmed my ability to demand information out of him just yet. He seemed to know how to do that. Why would he? Is he telling me to just look? I looked toward the object that was in front of Caleb, and recognized a tree trunk. it had been freshly cut down. It looked like it had been cleaved three quarters of the way through, and the tree had tipped the rest of the way off. That was what Caleb was pulling his horn out of, but where was the tree?

Caleb looked towards the river, and I could finally see through the dust enough to notice that a massive tree was now bridging the river.

_Bridging the river. Amazing. It must have taken mere minutes for him to see the possibility. _

"Caleb! That's perfect!" Sarah said, her eyes shining with obvious affection. I wondered how Caleb could be so oblivious to her, seeing how he figured out how to make a bridge.

I tried to get on the tree, prepared to go across. To my surprise, I felt Caleb stop me with his paw. I looked up at him. "You" he said "aren't going anywhere without rest."

"But-" I began, but then, I noticed that Bastiodon and Machoke had lain back down and began sleeping again. The familiar guilt washed over me. "Oh..." I finished.

"Its not just them, Servine" Caleb said. "You look more exhausted than those two do."

I tried to protest. "But-".

"Servine, if I covered your eyes with my paws, you would fall asleep on the spot" he interrupted bluntly. Suddenly, I felt the exhaustion that I had been suppressing. "Nobody is touching this tree whatsoever until I have confirmed that all of you have had enough rest" he announced to the other eight of us. "Get some sleep. **Now.**"

With that, he jumped onto the trunk and curled up, closing his eyes. How tired was he? was he hiding his exhaustion to get that message out? Most of the others obeyed him; he had become the leader in this quest simply by telling them to do what would benefit them, instead of what they should do to get something done faster. My teammates slept, hanging from a tree by their vines. Mightyena's teammates were sleeping away from the water. Sarah went to sleep at the base of the log, trying to be close to Caleb. The only others standing were Mightyena and Nincada. Nincada scuttled over to me. "You heard Caleb" he told me. "He wont let us across until you get some sleep".

"Fine…" I mumbled, and went to sleep nearby my team. I thought that getting sleep would be difficult, but my eyes closed immediately, and I slept.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

"Will you get some sleep too?" The small Nincada asked me. I looked down at him, and saw no sleepiness in his eyes at all. He had done no running. "No, Nincada. I don't think so" I replied. I was not tired at all. I was built to run for a long time.

I was conflicted about the little bug. It had been a tremendous weight off of me when I apologized to Sarah. It confused me that it felt so good to apologize. Perhaps I had felt guilty about my actions for a while. I really could not explain it. Team Edge had fooled me so easily about that weapon of Caleb's at first, but I caught on quick. The only reason I had not retaliated yet was that I felt no reason to. I genuinely felt sorry about my actions. That was new.

I felt pressure building up in my body again. Making sure Nincada was not there to see it (he had gone back to his spot in the shade), I shook my fur, and dark sparks arced off of me into the air and grass. the pressure dissipated. That energy had been building in me slowly ever since I was shocked by Crystal Star. It was painful. Caleb likely had no idea what that thing could do. I hoped that this would wear off soon. Where the dark sparks hit the grass, the grass withered and died.

_That weapon cannot remain._

But I did not want to challenge Caleb. I could probably take him down, if I needed to. Problem was, he was good enough of a friend to me that it felt wrong just thinking of challenging him. I did not know how attached to Crystal star he was. I just had to hope that Caleb would lose the thing, or leave it.

_All I can do is hope. _

We would get a move on when the others woke up. once everyone was rested, Caleb would let us through. Caleb had impressed me when he challenged Servine. Servine had taken me down once, when I was getting started as a leader. I made the wrong move and was knocked out by vine whip real quick. Caleb had basically disarmed her with only words. He controlled the situation easily, without using his power.

_He is a true leader. After only a few days in the guild. _

I needed some rest. I walked over to my team, and tried to take a nap. That stupid dark energy would wake me up every so often whenever I slept now, but I could get rid of it. Eventually, I hoped, it would fade. My eyes closed.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

It took a few hours for everyone to wake up. Sarah was up first, and tried to sneak up the log to lay next to Caleb, but as she was attempting to jump up, she caught Caleb's eye. He had one eye open, glaring like _I said: nobody touches this until I give permission. _

After that standoff, the Tangela woke up, followed by Mightyena. Mightyena's team woke up, revitalized. Servine was the only one to still be asleep. Mightyena looked at Caleb, and Caleb shook his head. Servine needed rest. Caleb climbed off of the log and came to us. "You guys can talk, but quietly" he whispered "Servine can rest. Leave her alone".

We obliged quietly, and waited. We waited probably about an hour before she woke up. Caleb made sure we weren't staring at her when she did. "What time is it?" she asked, more awake than I have seen her yet. "past noon" Caleb replied "now that you guys are all awake, go ahead and cross the tree to the other side. Let Bastiodon go first".

With the other's help, we got Bastiodon onto the log. Caleb braced the log with a few stones to keep it from rolling, and Bastiodon started over. He was good with balance, and made it over easily. the rest of us went, Sarah and Caleb going together because of Caleb's slight issue with balance. I rode on Sarah's back. Servine was still acting like she was in a hurry, but I did not think that she would be running us too badly this time. We were quite close to the mountain like structure, and Caleb made Bastiodon the 'pace setter'.

"Make sure that you are behind Bastiodon at all times. Bastiodon, please go at a comfortable pace, but not too slowly" Caleb said.

Servine dealt with it, and MIghtyena seemed interested in the term 'pace setter'. I dont think that anyone had heard the term before, but the meaning was clear. Caleb was noncommittal about answering the questions about where he had heard it, but I knew.

_The human world. It must be a saying there. _

We reached the waterfall eventually, and everybody was in top shape for the coming adventure. "Nincada" Caleb said "Now is the time that you should dig into there. We shall join you shortly".

"Wait" Mightyena said. "take Bastiodon with you. He may be harmed by the waterfall." Bastiodon came up to me, and I thought about how big I needed to build the tunnel now. I could do it. "done" I said, and began to dig. It was slow going making the hole big enough for bastiodon, but I was very good at my job. We eventually could no longer hear the conversation above.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

"Explain the process" Caleb said.

"We jump right through the waterfall" Mightyena said, as if this was something you did everyday. We were to jump through?

_I don't need to be crushed. No thanks. _

Caleb showed similar misgivings. "What?" he practically croaked. "Sorry, but do you have any clue how fast that water is moving? At all? Whatsoever?"

"Of course we do" Servine said crossly. "Just run at it and jump. You will go right through. The water will hurt, but you should make it through.

_**Should?!**_

Caleb clearly wanted to argue, but he gave up. "Right" he said. "Let's go". We positioned ourselves many yards away from the falls, and as a team, we ran towards it.

_This is so __**stupid**__!_

We hit the falls, and tore through it. Or rather, it tore through us. It hurt really bad, and I was crying out in pain, but we were suddenly in open air again. The whole lot of us tumbled painfully to a stop in the wet cavern, and most of us stood up after a few moments. Machoke and the Tangela had barely gotten through, and were on the edge of the roaring waterfall. Servine and Mightyena seemed fine, and had made it further than I did. Caleb was behind me, trying to shake water out of his fur and failing miserably. I walked over to Machoke and the Tangela. "Are you OK?" I asked them.

They replied that yes, they were fine. I turned and saw that Caleb now had a 'Why am I so stupid?' face on, and the other team leaders and I walked over to him. "What's up?" Mightyena asked, and I studied his expression.

"I'm just realizing that we could have followed Nincada through his tunnel" he said. "How how could I be that dumb?"

Mightyena, Servine, and I also began to assume the 'Why am I so stupid?' look, as we also realized that jumping through the waterfall was the worst of our options. We might have stood there for hours, blankly staring at each other if Machoke and the Tangela had not interrupted by howling with laughter and mirth. Their laughter was at us, the 'super tough' team leaders and me, having noticed that we were so incredibly stupid.

Nincada chose the worst time to pop up with Bastiodon in tow, and saw the others laughing at us, our blank idiotic expressions as we looked at each other. Nincada and Bastiodon figured it out real quick too, and joined in the laughter. My own laugh was building in my chest, and I started to chuckle. Mightyena was now desperately trying to hold in laughter. The two of us registered the blank looks on Caleb's and Servine's faces, and **lost **it. Everyone was laughing but the two of them, who continued to stare at each other blankly.

Eventually, Caleb blinked a few times and regained his composure. Servine was not as quick to recover. We only stopped laughing because Caleb looked around at us, and we quieted down. We thought he was going to say something, and he eventually did, but what came out of his mouth we could not have expected. We thought that he would ask us why we were being disrespectful, or to say that we should move on. What he said instead was "I think I need a nap…" and he turned around towards a small structure of rock that he promptly laid down on and closed his eyes. Had he even been sleeping at the river? I guess not.

A few seconds later, I saw his game. Rather, Servine did. "What!?" she exclaimed, snapping out of her stupor "No, no, no! We need to move!" She was back in high gear, which was exactly where Caleb needed her. "Absolutely" he said, jumping right up. "Is everyone in good health?"

We all told him that we were, despite our beating by waterfall. A breeze wafted from the cave, blowing Caleb's fur a bit. He looked so **powerful **when that happened. He dropped down from the rock structure and asked Servine a question: "Do we split up now?" "No" she replied "The first floor of the dungeon should have three staircases, and we will separate one team at a time"

That was that. We walked on in. Unlike the start of the mission, where we were clearly three teams, we now walked in an erratic group. The cave eventually turned into a Mystery dungeon, and enemies started to appear. They were mostly water Pokemon, and Water pulse would be basically useless, as would flamethrower. Servine and her Tangela would send dozens of vines out in a impressive web that attacked anything in the room. This strategy impressed Caleb quite a bit.

We sometimes came across a Tangela, and the others would just sit back and watch the show as I torched them. The others seemed impressed by my ability to tear through whatever I wanted at times. Nincada would dig around, setting pitfalls and alerting us to where they were. I want to tell you that our joke of finding out how many enemies were in each room worked perfectly, but Caleb squandered it real quick. He beat me to the punch, and notified us of the Pokemon in the room. I thought that Nincada had given me away.

"Where did you get that information?" I asked.

"From my horn" he said "obviously".

Ouch. That hurt, considering that I had not even thought about my senses. I just don't use it as much as others. I should make it a habit.

Team Rush impressed me with their power. At one point, we walked into a room absolutely **filled** with Wooper and Tangela, and Team rush stepped forward. In an amazing showcase of power, Mightyena and Machoke charged the group. Bastiodon actually stayed back, which I did not understand until he launched an incredible white beam from in front of his face that wiped out half of the enemies. Machoke would toss enemies around quickly and efficiently, and Mightyena shot around using an impressive attack combination of Quick Attack and Shadow ball, running through explosions and other Pokemon.

I was jealous of his Shadow Ball technique, as I remembered my recent failure to use the attack. I watched the team rip through the area, and there was a set of stairs. We walked over to it, and Caleb took an extra step forward. "We will take this one" he announced to the others. "Very well" Servine said "good luck".

"Thank you" he replied, and our team walked up the stairs.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

I watched the three of them go up, and the staircase simply faded away. Caleb had not even gotten to attack anything, but I had noticed that he had not seemed particularly anxious to. Servine interrupted my thoughts. "We should get a move on".

We did. we walked on, and fought more enemies. Servine's team had an impressive technique, but it was not compatible with our attacking strategy, those vines just got in our way. Servine also noticed this, but was far less polite about it. "Just let me do it" she would say.

Without Sarah, our attempts at fighting Tangela were not as efficient, but we basically let Bastiodon take care of it. His Flash Cannon was an impressive attack, and it had stunned Team Edge. Caleb had been impressed, Nincada was busy digging pitfalls and almost got hit by it, and Sarah…

I shook my head. Why was I so focused on Sarah? her attitude changed every day. She switched from being calculating to being too focused on Caleb to being a pyromaniac who was capable of anything. She was just so… something. Who was she really?

_And why do I think about her more than the others?_

Nincada was missed by the group as a whole the most really, The six of us remaining had failed to notice just how much those pitfalls helped us. Fights took one and a half times longer than normal because enemies were not trapped in those pits. They also were a hindrance however, when we discovered that we were walking in circles. It was Machoke who fell into one, and we got him out quick. If Bastiodon had fallen in, we would have had to leave him there. When we next came to a staircase, Servine immediately walked up with her team, happy to leave us.

That horrible pressure was back, and I made sure that my team was not watching before I shook the dark electricity from by body. Crystal Star needed to go, but I could not bring myself to do it. The third stairs were in the next room we checked. Personally, I wondered if there was a way that I could atone for my actions to the other Pokemon before I met Sarah. despite it being Caleb who got me apologizing to Sarah, it had been Sarah who had really made the impact on me. Why? was there something I can't, or won't imagine going on? We needed to move on and complete our portion of the mission.

_Why is everything so confusing now?_

* * *

**Hey, Guys! I know that this was a shorter chapter. I packed lots of character development into this chapter, and i am pleased with the results. Remember to review my work and tell me what i can improve in my work. If you enjoy my story, feel free to follow the story and be notified via email when new chapters come about. Thank you all for reading!**

**-Hyperjade. **

**So you learned a few things about a few characters. **

**-Servine is not the best leader out there, despite her strategies for battling and her impressive speed. **

**-Mightyena was not fooled for long about Crystal Star, but is unsure of himself anyhow. **

**-Something is up with Mightyena's health. Let's hope it passes. **

**-Caleb is awesome at causing character development. **


	10. Chapter Ten: Three Powers

Chapter 10: Three Powers

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

We walked alone now, the three of us. Nincada dug ahead, setting traps wherever. Sarah kept trying to chat with me. I tried to ignore most of it. I had impressed her too much with my little show of leadership, and she was particularly chatty.

_I can't be with you. Please. This needs to stop._

I could not make myself tell her that out loud. She would be hurt, and launch into denial. Why is she so insensitive to my plight? what leads her to pretend that it would be acceptable for me to stay? She knows perfectly well how this will work out; I told her exactly why I couldn't stay. "Come on" she said sweetly "talk to me".

"No".

Well, that silenced her for a bit. Perhaps I should be harsher more. Problem was, I felt bad doing it. She did not deserve my anger. Above everything else, I need to get home, but… if Sarah could not accept that, I don't know what to do.

_My only option is to be mean to her sometimes. That hurts me more than anything. I have to be the harsh, cold leader. _

Problem was, I was incapable of acting like something I am not. Seriously, I think the last job I could possibly take is an actor. I can't act out other personalities.

_A job. Im thinking about a job. I have a job: To get through waterfall cavern. I'm barely seventeen. A job can wait. _

The road ahead was twisting and turning, but always going straight overall. We met absolutely no enemies at all. What's up with this floor? Nothing to be found anywhere. There were no stairs. We just walked on and on, for maybe an hour. The walls were soaked with water, and the ground was saturated. Nincada hated it. He eventually got out of the ground and climbed back on Sarah. Sarah kept looking at me. Her gaze was longing and fully attentive to everything I did. I supposed if she had nothing else to do, she could go ahead and do that. I just had to ignore her. Nincada was evidently very bored.

Sarah moved closer until she was right next to me, and I mean **right** next to me. I sped up, and she did likewise. I was horrified that she was so intent on stopping me.

_Get away from me!_

I couldn't say that either. It would feel so wrong to do that. Nevertheless, Sarah was too close for comfort. I moved to my right until I was near the wall, pretending to inspect the walls for **something**. Something to distract Sarah. Too late, I recognized that I had trapped myself as she moved closer again, pinning me between her and the wall. I could only go forward and pretend not to notice.

_This is too much. What if I fail to keep my mission in mind? I will be trapped here as an Absol, with only Sarah to keep me company. Nincada is great, but he is too quiet to keep me focused all the time. As long as he is speaking, I can focus on the mission. _

Speaking of the mission, we finally, **finally **arrived in a room. However, there was an issue. This room was exactly the same size and shape as the first one! That made no sense. When I turned back, the entrance back to our corridor was gone. Our path had twisted and turned, but it always went right, then left. Or left, then right. We always went straight overall. What on earth was this?

Nincada had noticed too. "We did not go in a circle. This is the same room anyways. Will someone tell me what is going on?"

"Wish I could" I admitted, inspecting the new (or old?) room. I pushed past Sarah and walked to the other end of the room. Nincada jumped off of Sarah's back and dug down. "Caleb!" Nincada called me "The wall you are near is hollow!"

Really? interesting. Nincada could feel vibrations underground, so I assumed that he was not playing some joke.

I brought Crystal Star around and held it at the ready. The wall seemed strong, but it could not be strong enough to take a strike from my sword. I lunged forward, bringing the weapon down on the wall. The wall cracked, but it held somehow. My attacks did not do enough damage to break through. I remembered my abilities, and started to prepare for my next attack.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

I was not too surprised that Caleb tried to attack the wall, or that the wall was not damaged that badly. I resurfaced, getting out of that horrid wet ground. "Caleb-" I began, about to tell him that attacking was not going to work. I should dig through. What I saw caleb doing stopped me cold. He had taken a stance on the wet ground, and large white swords shimmered into existence around him. They spun slowly around him for a few seconds, and then shot upwards, disappearing as they neared the ceiling. As they shot towards the ceiling, Caleb glowed red for a moment. What was that attack? It looked like it had done nothing, but Caleb was preparing for another attack on the wall.

_It won't work, Caleb. _

He lunged, and his strike with Crystal star was more than devastating. the wall blew apart under Crystal star, and behind the wall was a simple room with a staircase.

"Swords dance" Caleb simply said as he inspected the staircase. "We should go"

With that, Caleb walked right up the stairs. I climbed on Sarah's back, but not before noticing how Sarah was staring at where Caleb was. Her eyes shone, impressed with his attack.

_Sarah, you need to let him go. He needs to get home. _

I would talk to her about it later. For now, Sarah walked up the stairs and into the next room.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

Waterfall cave had never had such a challenge in it before. We walked through that corridor twice before we began tearing apart the initial room, destroying everything until the stairs appeared out of the dust. Now we walked on. This floor was odd as well. it appeared to be a normal dungeon level, but there were still no enemies. We walked around, making certain that we did not go in circles. This floor had many small rooms, and one massive room in the center. The center room had an object in the center with twelve small indentations in it, each a different size and shape. It looked like another freaking puzzle.

"This place is different" My teammates said together. They did not talk much, but when they did, they said the exact same thing at the exact same time. I have never heard one of them ever say something on their own.

"You mean the dungeon? Or this room in particular" I said, keeping an eye out for enemies. There were none.

"The dungeon itself" the two of them said "It never had puzzles before"

"And let's hope it never does again" I said tartly "this object has something to do with our next challenge. I **hate **puzzles!" They laughed at my discomfort. Why were they so eager to make fun of me nowadays? Perhaps that blasted Caleb had something to do with their new issue with authority. Caleb. What a ridiculous name for a Pokemon. He influences those around him massively, and then just walks away, leaving **me **to clean up my team's act. Jerk.

"You two, behave" I commanded, taking control of the situation again "we need to find whatever goes in these indentations. hop to it you two"

They got control of themselves and began to check the twelve small adjacent rooms for clues while I checked out this odd object. It was large, and looked like a massive ellipsoid, just sitting there. The indentations were in the side of the ellipsoid, a little higher than my eye level. This thing looked like a large artifact with pieces missing. each hole faced an entrance to a small room.

_Twelve holes, twelve rooms. Each room must contain an item that corresponds to the holes in the artifact. _

That in mind, I wandered over to the room that clearly contained an item shaped like a meowth's headpiece. as I walked in, I saw absolutely nothing. It was an empty room. I walked towards the center.

_Is there some clue in the walls?_

No marks were visible anywhere. The walls were seamless. the floor flat and made of the same set dirt as before. The ceiling was basic. I wandered about in that room, checking every corner closely. I checked almost every spot within the room, as if standing somewhere specific would make something visible. As if. My team checked on me, shaking themselves in an expression that loosely translated as _Nope. Nothing there. _

Wonderful. I walked over to them, **and tripped**. I landed face first on the dirt. I heard the Tangela laughing. What had I tripped on? There was nothing there. I got up and turned towards the spot where I had tripped on **something**. Nothing was there. I had **felt **something hit my feet. I reached down, reeling ridiculous until I came in contact with some object. it was **invisible**!

_No wonder we saw nothing. These things are completely invisible. _

The Tangela began to laugh harder, thinking that I had lost my mind. I picked the object up, and found it to be barely light enough to carry. I turned around. my teammates were rolling on the floor laughing. I walked right past them, the item in my hands. Eventually, I made it to the ellipsoid in the center of the room. Whatever I held in my hands, it was in fact the correct shape that I could push it into its spot on the structure. immediately, my Tangela friends were hurled out of the room by some unseen force, and the room disappeared. The item rippled into existence, becoming part of the stone. There was no trace of the hole or the room.

"Tangela, Search the other rooms for more invisible items" I commanded, walking over to the next room, this one should hold a item shaped like an eye.

They complied without a word, realizing what had happened. using vines now, we probed the surface of the ground for the remaining invisible items. they were so much easier to find once we knew what to do. The disc, eye, arrow, flame, leaf, and some other symbols I could not identify were located and pushed into the appropriate places. once the spaces and rooms disappeared, the ellipsoid was complete. It stood there, finished, and we waited for something spectacular to happen and show us the door. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened!

I became enraged. Was this whole thing a joke!? I began to attack with my vines, striking it over and over. I jumped on it. I stamped on it. "Move, won't you!?" I yelled at it. I jumped off and summoned glowing multicolored leaves, sending them towards the stone. Nothing moved it. Nothing damaged it. The rock did not care.

_I'm being beaten by a stupid rock! I hate this!_

I screamed in rage and slammed it. I only managed to harm myself in the process. I cursed a few times and finally stopped myself. "You two" I said without turning around "encase it in vines. We're moving this thing."

They obliged, and I added my vines to the mix. Pulling was useless. Lifting was also useless. What was this stupid thing?! Was I wasting my time? I let go, and the Tangela followed suit. Stupid rock. "Search this room" I commanded strongly "Find something. Tell me about it. This rock has nothing"

The two of them began probing with vines I jumped onto the rock and viewed the room. If something else was invisible, we would find it.

We searched for hours. Nothing. We were trapped in one room with one rock. Why on earth was this so difficult? We became hungry. We ate apples. We paced around, staring at the ellipsoid, wondering what could possibly move it. Eventually, we just tired out. We were forced to go to sleep, hatred of this puzzle in our hearts. I was much more tired than I usually was, even though I honestly tired out pretty quick.

As I fell asleep, I thought that I was being dragged into sleep. It was like I had been slowly inhaling sleep powder.

_It must be the stone. It's putting me to sleep! I cant..._

…

I woke up slowly. My eyes registered a bright light that was hard to look at. My legs felt like stone. I waited until I could get up for a while.

_We fell asleep! We're late! We need to go!_

I forced myself up. The room looked very similar, except that the ellipsoid had begun to glow a brilliant blue. The light was not coming from the entire stone; It had a glowing, complex pattern on it that defied all explanation. Its glow hurt my eyes, but I knew I had to get close to it. The Tangela joined me, blinking away sleep. We needed to get to that thing. The air was dense around the stone as we neared it, and it was like walking underwater (Yes, I do know the feeling). we reached it, and jumped on with difficulty. as soon as we were secure on it, it began to sink, just sinking into the ground. the floor turned into crystal clear water, and we saw another floor underneath it. The stone carried us ever so slowly to the new floor, which looked very much like the earlier one, but to my delight I saw a staircase. We raced to it, no longer caring about what that stone was. It was too annoying to stick around in our minds.

_We're on our way_

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

Well, **that **was beyond annoying. We had spent several hours pacing around that stupid rock before it eventually put us to sleep. Machoke had fallen asleep right on top of it, and Bastiodon and I were forced to take the quick and startling way down as the ground turned to water and just dropped us through. I still had water in my fur. This floor, curse it, had tricks as well. When we arrived, we saw a few statues around the room. One Psyduck statue near the exit to the room, and a Grimer statue behind where the stairs were. A Tangela statue stood next to Machoke, who thought it was very weird. "Odd statues" he rumbled "What are they for?"

"Perhaps they are there simply to unnerve us" Bastiodon said in his low, metallic voice.

I hoped that was the case, because no matter how tough you were, you did not like random statues that were just **there**. No explanation. These things would give a Dragonite the creeps. "Lets move on" I said, hoping my voice sounded less shaky to the others than it did to me.

We did move on, finding room after room full of statues. This floor was a massive maze, much bigger than the average dungeon floor. We found no staircase. Nothing but freaky statues of Pokemon. I shivered, though I was not even thinking about the statues for a moment. I wondered what caused my reaction, and I realized it was smell. Something was around and ready to attack.

"Prepare yourselves" I said to my team under my breath. We whirled around, but only statues were in the room again. I was losing it. I growled angrily "Nothing. Absolutely nothing"

We continued on, feeling generally creeped out. Machoke kept glancing around, viewing each statue in each room. Bastiodon would occasionally send a mild ground type attack into the earth, as if to flush out any attackers. If any of these suckers moved, they would be destroyed by earthquake, smashed by Machoke's karate chop, and wiped off the map by my shadow ball. I smelled it again: the smell of a Pokemon nearby. I turned, but the statue of a wooper was what greeted me. this statue looked like it was about to attack: head back and mouth open, preparing the fire off a water gun. It was frozen in that position. I smelled it; It smelled exactly like a wooper. I stared at the thing, and it being a statue, it stared right back.

"It doesn't smell like any statue" I told my team. Machoke nodded, and Bastiodon made a rumbling noise in his throat. When Bastiodon did that, it meant that any sort of scare could result in a flash cannon to the assailants face faster than any bastiodon should be able to move.

Machoke went to the wooper statue and picked it up. "It's heavy" he grunted. That was surprising. If it was heavy enough to be a hindrance to Machoke, that meant it was seriously heavy. "Let's just find that staircase" I said. "drop the statue"

Machoke did. It slammed into the ground, but it did not break. We turned and continued exploring the dungeon. There were no stairs. The stone floor dry and unyielding, very unlike the waterfall cavern, which is supposed to have soaked walls, saturated dirt floors, and pools of water everywhere. This place was more mazelike, with smooth gray walls, floor and ceilings. Even the statues were the same light gray. no items lay around, nothing moved, no sounds but our own evident. I heard nothing but our footsteps. That meant that nothing else was making noise; My ears are the best out there.

We wandered around the floor, now not finding any new rooms. Not a single room had a staircase. We wondered how long until we had to use our resting badge power; Pour ghost energy into our badge and sleep, unnoticed by our surroundings. For now, we were starving. We ate apples and a banana that apparently came from team edge before they came to the guild. It had kept well, and it tasted excellent (according to Bastiodon who had eaten it). The team seemed surprised that I did not take the thing for myself. Its true, I used to be like that, but I felt changed. Sarah had done that to me in **one day**. I'm not sure myself how that happened.

_Why do I think about you so much? Why do I think about you now? I have a job to do. _

It was infuriating to me that I could not place a title to the feeling I had. It was a mix of emptiness, sadness, and that awful pressure in my body. I shook more dark sparks out of my fur.

_Ow… _

In my musings, I had failed to pay attention. I was pulled back to my reality by Machoke making a loud noise of surprise. I spun around and saw Machoke being wrapped by vines, a tangela was attacking him. Problem was, it was still a statue. the vines holding Machoke in place were stone. Despite Machoke's incredible strength, he was stuck fast. Bastiodon began charging a flash cannon. I let him, because we had made the effort to use those gummis that we found. Bastiodon should not be able to harm Machoke.

Bastiodon launched the incredible white laser at the stone tangela, blasting it to pieces. Or at least, it was supposed to. The statue appeared unharmed, and was simply thrown across the room, Machoke still stuck in it's grasp. The enemy and Machoke clattered to the ground. Bastiodon and I raced to the pair, trying to free Machoke, but nothing could be done. "Machoke!" I yelled, and was going to say more, but I felt the telltale force of water to my side. I was flung across the room by my unseen enemy.

I was done playing. There was no way we were being stopped by this ridiculous test. I rushed the statue of a whiscash, changing my tail until it was a reflective silver, and slammed the statue. Nothing happened. The stupid stone was unaffected. I blinked, and that was my big mistake. I felt something slam into me full force while my eyes were closed. The thing landed on top of me, a statue again. It was too heavy for me. The stone whiscash just sat on me, and I felt like I was being crushed by it's weight.

It was Bastiodon who saved me. In a quick moment, the stone was hurled away. I jumped up "Thanks" I said to Bastiodon, possibly the first time I had said thanks to either of my teammates. Machoke was being squeezed by the tangela, crushed by a power most tangela don't have. I rushed forward, but I was too late. Me, too late. Machoke was too hurt, and fell unconscious. I began to reach for a reviver seed, but Machoke was transported away in the same manner that she would have if I sent him home with my badge. Machoke was gone. Hopefully, Machoke was now safe. We were not. I kept my eye on the tangela, and Bastiodon watched the whiscash.

"if you take your eyes off them even for a second, you get attacked" I told Bastiodon "i was slammed by that thing, and all I did was **blink**" He nodded slowly. "We must keep them in sight at all times" he rumbled "we must exit this room"

We moved very slowly over to the entrance of the room. "Keep an eye on the statues" I told him "i will go forward and watch the road ahead, you keep right behind me watching backwards"

He said "Yes" and we slowly made our way over to the hallway. We would have to keep every statue in sight until we found those stairs. It took ages, but we managed to do it. After almost an hour of searching the maze, we found a large room with a staircase in it. Problem was, it had dozens of pokemon statues in it. two tangela statues had a vine netting around the stairs. we were not leaving anytime soon. These things could not even be damaged. What was up with that?

"We need to be careful, Bastiodon" I said "there are only two of us now"

Bastiodon nodded. We would have an advantage, because Bastiodon's vision was very wide, but we could only see so much. we needed a better angle. "We need to go along the walls. Find a spot where we can sneak forward" I told Bastiodon. We snuck along the walls, keeping a view on every statue in the room. Most faced the hallway, and only some were facing random directions. On the opposite end of the room, we discovered a spot where the statues were thin enough to **maybe **get through. We crept forward, keeping everything in sight. Eventually, there were too many to keep in sight all at once. I whipped my head back and forth repeatedly, constantly checking to make certain that none of those awful things noticed us. We reached the back of the stairs, and began to sneak around them. The vines were a problem, they blocked most of the entrance other than the area right next to it. I could squeeze through, Bastiodon could not.

"Run up as fast as you can" Bastiodon intoned "if you make it, I will be transported to you". I went to protest, but he was absolutely right. I needed to make it up, but was I fast enough? Would these monsters knock out Bastiodon while I was getting up there? I only had one choice. "OK" I said, and shot upwards using quick attack. I felt vines try and grab me, but I made it. I made it up, and Bastiodon appeared next to me, badly battered but standing. I took out many Oran berries and gave them to him. as he ate, I viewed our new floor, and saw the freakiest place I have ever seen.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I stared in awe at our new scene. It was familiar to a childhood memory, but way more extensive. There were bumps in the ground, every wall was wavy and erratic, the ceiling sometimes connected to the floor in a pillar, though I could barely see them.

_It's a mirror house. A giant mirror house. I can't tell what is where. _

Getting through that last floor had been creepy as all get out. It even kept Sarah from trying to bond with me for a bit. We had an easier time of it than I suspected the others did, because Sarah and I could sense our surroundings. we saw the things moving behind us, and just bolted. they caught up to us quick, but we amended that by staying back to back, watching every statue. The last room had been difficult, but Nincada just slipped up the stairs and we found ourselves with him. Now we were in the most extensive mirror house I have ever seen. It amazed me that this could be a thing here.

_Why did nobody tell me that waterfall cave had this stuff?_

Perhaps it had not before. Perhaps this was new, and had everything to do with our mission. I reflected on that word. Mission. was this a mission? Frankly it sounded like a treasure hunt. Sarah and Nincada pulled me out of my musings.

"This place is amazing!" Sarah yelled, and her voice echoed down the hall. Nincada agreed with her "I have never seen anything like this" he said. Our reflections showed on a rare flat bit of wall. To my utter horror, I saw my reflection **look at me **from the corner of my eye. I blinked, and it went back to normal. I must have been imagining it, unnerved by the statues of the last floor. They reminded me of Weeping Angels, a fictional monster from the TV show Doctor Who. They moved so fast, and they were stone when looked at. I wondered if this dungeon was using my memories for that challenge. how else could it have worked like that? and now we were in a mirror dungeon. Something that according to my team, is not normal.

_Could it be using my memories? Is that possible?_

It should not have been, but this was one of the freaky dungeons of this world. I had to accept that weird things were going to happen. My thought process was interrupted by my promptly running face first into something invisible.

**Bong!**

"Owww…"i muttered, silently cursing myself. Of course. this was a mirror maze. all good mirror mazes had glass walls as well, so that you would bump into things. This was not basic glass, however, because I could not see it at all. An actual invisible wall. Well, that complicated things. Sarah tried to bound over to me, only to hit her own invisible wall. She bounced off and hit the ground, too surprised to land on her feet. That wall was between me and the others. When had it gotten there? It must have just appeared. I was separated from the group.

"We're separated!" I called out to my team, realizing how redundant that was. Nincada tried to save the day as he does best: by digging. Unfortunately, he could not make a dent in the reflective surface. I inwardly cursed a few more times. This place was annoying me. "Try to find me some other way" I told them "if any of us find the stairs, go up immediately. We should find ourselves with you"

Sarah started to argue, but I gave her a glare. She grew frustrated and stormed off, Nincada still on her back. Perhaps that helped me keep her away, but it still felt bad. It felt wrong. I shook my head and turned around, straight into another invisible wall. Striking the wall was useless, I just had to weave through this horrible maze. I wandered around, bumping into things, and generally having a terrible time. there were so many mirrors, and it started to look like a funhouse of sorts. the walls waved like frozen ripples in water, and my image was distorted in them. I hated mirror mazes. I came to a room like the inside of a giant polyhedron. all the mirrors perfectly flat, and I saw hundreds of myself in the walls. Again, I had a scare by thinking that one of the images was looking right at me. I looked away and looked back. The image was back to normal.

_I'm losing it in a mirror maze. This would be a horrible way to go. _

That in mind, I pushed through to the other side of the room, jumping to the door. It was not a door, it was absolutely fake. I slammed into another invisible wall. The door I had come from was similarly blocked, which I found out with my face. The entire polyhedron began to rotate, forcing me to walk along the bottom. When it stopped, a hole that was in the top initially was now a doorway to the side. This thing was taunting me, but I had to go through it now. This door, thankfully, was not blocked. My next corridor was circular and reflective, spinning slowly like some attraction in a fun house at an amusement park.

_I hate this. Hate it. There is nothing worse than this challenge. At least the statue one was constant. _

The spinning corridor thinned until I practically had to crawl through it, still rotating. I don't know how to crawl as an absol, and I was going very slowly. it was so small by the end that I was pressed to get through, and was getting spun around by the rotating thing.

_I feel like a clown in a clown car. I feel like a lab rat. I feel like if I ever get out of here, I may kill the next thing that talks to me. _

If I was having homicidal thoughts, it was time to think about something else. My horn was no help here, grinding against the surface of the narrowing cylinder. At this point, I was getting spun around constantly, sideways, upside down, sideways, normal. I tried to focus on getting to the end, which I could not see because the entire floor was made of **mirrors**. I found that I could see the edge of something, and a tiny hole became apparent to me as I inched forward very slowly. Two feet, one foot, one inch away. My claw caught it's edge, and I forced myself through.

_Finally. On to the next horrible challenge here. _

I had forgotten to wait until I was the correct way up when I got out of there, landing painfully on my back. Because the ground was not malleable, my horn struck the ground and whipped my head to my left. That hurt too. I forced myself up. I put one paw out in front of me, and felt an invisible wall. It may have taken me hours to get through the next few rooms, despite their small size. I had to eat. I took out an apple, and tried to chomp it down. My teeth made no impact on the apple at all! it was indestructible here.

_You will either get out of here, or starve _The dungeon seemed to be saying. I put the apple back and began my slow trek forwards.

_I hope the others are all right. _

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I muttered under my breath as we walked. we occasionally hit invisible walls, took turns into dead ends, and generally had a slow time of it.

"Why did he have to be so mean?" I complained to Nincada. I was of course talking about Caleb. Why was he being so harsh all of a sudden?

"Sarah" he began in a tone of voice that told me this was a delicate subject "Caleb needs to get home. You need to let him. He is acting this way to push you away, for his sake, and yours"

I thought about that. Caleb wanted to go home. Did he really think that he would find something? It was extremely unlikely that he would find anything. I don't care what he thinks or says, he is staying with me. Nothing he can do about it. I feel lighter when I think about him. He gives me courage and energy just by being around. He's a kind and generous person. How could I let him just go? I would have nobody. Again.

_I understand perfectly that he needs to leave _My logical side said.

_Shut up, me _I shot back. Caleb was not leaving me. Ever.

This mirror maze was awful. I smacked my face into another invisible wall. To anyone on the other side of the wall, the sight of my face smashed against the invisible wall would have been extremely humorous. I'm glad Caleb wasn't there. I looked through the wall at another mirror. My reflection…

I gasped despite myself. The absol I saw in the mirror was colored like an average absol. I checked myself, but my claws were still red. What was going on? "That's freaky…" Nincada said. I agreed. I stared at the image of the absol in the mirror. I still saw Nincada on my back. Suddenly, I noticed something else. The mirror image of me was more muscular, so much stronger than I was. It was **Caleb**!

I stared at the mirror, at Caleb, and he stared right back. It was clearly a mirror image, but I saw my love instead of myself. I moved, and he did likewise. His horn was on his left side instead of his right because it was a mirror image. His sword was missing. He matched me, moving the way I did. This mirror was some dungeon trickery, but it was very realistic. When I turned, another reflection of me was me, like it was supposed to be.

"Let's go, Sarah" Nincada said, a bit of fear in his voice "I don't like this"

I did not either, and I walked away from the mirror. From that point forward, One of my reflections looked like Caleb at all times. This was incredibly freaky. I still found myself walking close to him.

_Why am I doing that? It's not Caleb. Its a reflection. Nincada Is uncertain, I think he thinks i'm crazy at this point. Maybe I am. _

I hoped we would find the real Caleb soon.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was feeling miserable. I absolutely hated this. Now I walked into the first normal room in the entire floor. It was smooth, still made out of mirrors. Except for me, it was empty. I was feeling really hungry, as if the dungeon was sucking away the food in my stomach. I felt like I was being watched, and I looked at the wall. Again, I thought that my reflection did something I did not, but I thought I was finally going insane here. I walked into the room, and managed not to run into the dozens of invisible walls that were likely in here. The door disappeared behind me.

_I'm trapped_

I don't like being trapped. It felt awful. I walked around the room, and found no unseen walls anywhere. The room was not perfectly square, and the walls angled very slightly so that it made a sort of trapezoid. The result was me seeing a spherical room, with one of me in every section.

**Click!**

I froze. I had stepped on something hidden. It had clicked like a button. Panic filled my thoughts, but I had not moved. The ground suddenly became liquid underneath me, and I was slowly being pulled down. It was like quicksand, and despite my thrashings, the reflective liquid began to pull me down

_I can't die here!_

"Help!" I called "Please!"

No help came. My team was somewhere else, and I was about to be drowned in a liquid mirror. Slowly, my head was pulled under.

_Help..._

I woke slowly. Where was I? I felt like something had changed. My body felt weird for more reason. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing.

_Another dream?_

There was a room to my right, and I saw the room I had left. I was on some surface, but I could not see anything. I could not hear anything. How long had I been asleep? I got up slowly. I felt no pain. I looked at the nothingness below me. I was standing there, on blackness, and the room now ahead of me seemed to just be a floor and a roof, and only the far walls were visible. It was like looking at a diorama. It was the same shape of the room I had just been pulled out of. I moved forward, hoping to get back, but I struck another invisible wall. I was trapped in this blackness out of the room. I moved back, and found another wall in the darkness. Where the heck was i?

I searched the blackness, realizing that it was like a corridor. I began to walk along it, only able to get a few feet away from the rooms, and unable to enter the rooms. I took inventory as I walked. Crystal Star was gone!

That was not good. I had become attached to the weapon, and losing it was hard on me. My body still felt weird. I froze.

_I'm so stupid!_

I searched my nervous system, and my body felt mostly normal, except for one glaring issue.

_My horn is on the left side of my head! What?!_

I tried to calm myself, but no amount of self control could stop me from freaking out right now. I was **switched**, My body's left and right sides flipped! What was causing this? I needed to get out of this place. With horrible dread, I recognized the concept.

_I'm in the mirror. __**I'm the reflection now.**_

Not good. Really not good. I was a **reflection**. I was in the mirrors. I raced along now, trying desperately to get out, but my attempts to smash through the wall were ineffective. All I could do was run along this dark corridor and panic. What could I do? Nothing apparently. My sword was gone, and I was trapped in a mirror. The layout of the place was different, and I ran along a hallway, it's mirrors still smooth. Whenever I passed a mirror with an odd shape, my body painfully distorted, but I could still move easily. The Wavy and bent mirrors hurt bad, but I pushed through.

_I will not be defeated by something as simple as pain. One thing I have learned: Pain is a message that can be ignored. Just a message. I can put it on hold. _

It could have taken twenty minutes to an hour, i'm not certain, but I eventually found my team. They walked along, Sarah kept glancing at the mirrors, and Nincada searched for danger in the way he does. I was glad they had not let their guard down. I could catch their eye! In the corridor with me was another version of the two, but they just walked along with my team. they were actually reflections. If I touched one, would They feel it?

I decided to give it a shot. I reached forward and tried to grab Sarah. The moment I touched her however, I was sucked right into her reflected self, and took her place. I was stuck! I could no longer move my body. Instead, My body followed Sarah's movements.

_Now i'm Sarah's reflection! I took the place of her own reflection!_

eventually, she would notice me I hoped. I faced forward, unable to look at her, and until she looked at me, I would not be able to. We moved along, passing painful distorted mirrors and awful sharp corners. Occasionally, I moved positions to a different mirror. The time came when they saw me: Sarah smacked her face into an invisible wall, and I was in the mirror directly before her. She stepped back, and noticed me. I was still being forced to match her movements, and shock registered on my face as well. Sarah lifted her right foreleg, and my left foreleg moved accordingly. I felt extremely embarrassed at this point.

_I'm a freaking puppet!_

Sarah apparently thought that this was some freaky trickery, and that I would go away if she moved on. We walked together, Sarah being closer to the mirror than I felt comfortable. She clearly thought it was not me, right? She had moved on, but she was still attached to me in general. She enjoyed being near even an image of me. Why did she remain infatuated even though I had done many things to counteract that?

I would only look at her if she looked at me, and occasionally I switched locations as we turned a corner. On her left, on her right, sometimes above. At one point, I was her reflection in the floor, and I could actually feel her paws hit mine. she looked down at me as she walked, and I could only look back. "Where are you, Caleb?" she muttered, and I said it with her, though no noise came from me.

Nincada kept looking at me. He clearly thought something was wrong with the freaky reflection of me. They looked on, running into things, facing reflections of themselves (or me), and clearly having a terrible time.

I looked forward as Sarah stopped watching me for a bit. I saw that our path had less turns in it, and that the path was about to turn into a tunnel of sorts, the walls, ceiling, and floor not clearly defined, more circular. It was painful to go through, as my body distorted with the mirrors, and if I was physically capable of it, I would have screamed with the pain. Sarah walked through it, and Nincada still watched my reflection. Eventually, the tunnel turned into a normal corridor again, and came to a corner. I was on the far end of the tunnel, walking towards the corridor while Sarah neared the corner. Nincada jumped off and came up to me.

_Help me! _I wanted to call to Nincada, but I could not even look down until Sarah looked at Nincada. Even then, my field of view was not perfectly on Nincada. He watched me, and Sarah stopped looking at him and came up to the mirror herself. She was very close. uncomfortably close. She put her paw up on the mirror and I was forced to do the same.

_What on earth is she doing!?_

I felt the warmth of her paw, but she clearly only felt a mirror. "Hopefully we can find him soon" we said, and Nincada replied: "Perhaps we can find the stairs eventually" We both looked at him, and I felt myself smile "That should get him back to us" we said.

_Maybe that will work_

But what if I was still not there?

_I could be Sarah's reflection for the rest of my life!_

I was panicking now, my mind racing. If I remained a reflection of Sarah, my chance of going home was **zero**. Zip.

_Please no please no please no I don't want to be stuck like this forever get me out get me out get me out!_

I ordered myself to stop panicking. Sarah had begun walking again, and I had not noticed in my panic. My mental battle for sanity faded as I noticed that I was walking again, this time into a room with a large mirror ahead of us. I found myself in front of the others, at the mirror

I was not mirroring Sarah anymore! I could move! I glanced to the side quickly, and saw Sarah's reflection next to me, with Nincada's reflection on top. My eyes shot to Sarah, who saw me in the mirror. She whipped her head to the side, but saw that I was not there. I drove the point home by rushing to the mirror and slamming into it, trying to break free. Sarah noticed and ran to me "Caleb!" she shouted with obvious happiness "Its-"

She broke off, realizing that I was in a mirror "what are you **doing** there?!"

"Break it!" I tried to yell, but my voice still was not working. I slammed it, but nothing happened. She jumped back and generated a dangerous looking blue sphere near her horn. She fired the powerful blast right at me. I thought I was done for, but the attack was completely useless. It exploded violently upon impact, but the smoke simply rolled away from the surface. I set my head against the wall and began to push. I was making no ground, despite my new strength. I poured normal energy into my body and tried to push harder. My quick attack gave me no ground. Sarah could only watch while I struggled to get out of the mirror. Sarah came up to me, closer than normal, and her reflected body on my end pushed me out of the way. Sarah saw it, and apparently got an idea. she backed up, moved right in front of me, and I noticed that her reflection was now behind me. she moved forward, and I got pinned in between the wall and Sarah's reflection.

_What on earth is she doing?!_

Apparently, she thought that she could push me out like that, but the only thing she did was squish me against the wall. When pain became evident on my face, she backed down. I collapsed against the darkness, my side horribly damaged from being crushed. Her reflection showed no restraint, and my body did not affect it's progress. Sarah's own progress was unaffected as well. I was trapped.

I remembered when I had been Sarah's reflection myself. I had **felt **her, her paws warm. If I could feel her, than there was a way out. There was certainly a connection with the outside world. I looked at Nincada, hoping he could get my message. He just stared blankly back. Not being able to speak was frustrating. I put my paw onto the mirror. Immediately, Sarah tried to do the same.

_Opportunistic, huh? Oh well, I need to try anyways. _

I focused, and when Sarah's reflection was about to bump me aside, I tried to force myself into the reflection again. It worked, this time I connected and became Sarah's reflection again. I needed to make physical contact with Sarah to get out of here, and I could not with her reflection in the way. Once I became her reflection again, I noticed that I could still move. I moved backwards, and Sarah did too. I was in control this time!

_It is lucky that I am in control this time. Sarah is going to kill me, but I need to get out of here. _

I moved forward until I was close enough to put my paw on the mirror, and Sarah was forced to do the same. I felt the warmth of her paw.

_My contact with the outside world. I can get out of here. _

I focused on that feeling, pulling the warmth through the mirror until I felt warm, alive again. I was real again. I pushed forward. Sarah did the same, but I could overpower her with my physical strength. It was slow going, but I began to force my way out of the mirror. It bent under my force, breaking away like I was slowly surfacing out of a pool. it was slow and mildly embarrassing going, making such close contact with Sarah, but eventually I got through. I tumbled out, crashing into Sarah, and we both collapsed.

"Ow" I said, and then screeched in pain as my own voice rattled my eardrums. Sarah was not faring much better, staring at me. "you took control of my body" she said, looking stunned.

I had, and I should have told her what I was going to do, maybe by making her talk for me, but that was over now. I looked back at the mirror. All three of us had reflections now. I was out of there. I sighed with relief "I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life trapped in mirrors" I said, glad I could get out of there. I got up and looked at the mirror, seeing us all. Our battle was not over yet. My reflection was wearing a expression of anger, an expression i was **not **making. I blinked, but it did not go back to normal. Sarah's reflection now was looking at us, despite that Sarah was still staring at me. Nincada made a small squeaky noise as he saw it too. Our reflections walked right out of the mirror, and prepared for a fight.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I stared at Caleb, not saying a word.

_He took control of my body! What does that mean?_

The action confused me a lot. He had evidently figured out how to get back, and was prepared to use me like a puppet to get out. It had been scary, suddenly not being able to control myself. It must have been what had happened when He showed up in my reflection. When he did that, it was extremely painful, like a powerful attack was ripping through me slowly. when he got out of there, He had apparently forgotten that he had just done that to me.

On the other hand, he was willing to bond with me to get out, instead of just accepting his fate. That had to be a step in the right direction, right? Now he was looking at the mirror, and i wondered what he was thinking. I heard Nincada' squeak of freight, and I finally snapped out of it. Turning slowly, I saw **us**. Our reflections had walked straight out of the mirror, and now looked ready to attack us. Mirror Me was charging a water pulse and aiming at me, Mirror Caleb pulled out his Crystal Star, and Caleb saw that he had his own back. He pulled out his own. Nincada's mirror self had it's claws glowing with white energy.

Nincada Jumped off of me and prepared his own attack, and I was ready to fight myself. Suddenly, Mirror Caleb lunged at Caleb, and the two clashed. Nincada dodged an attack by his mirror self, and the two watched each other warily. I was just watching, and that was my mistake as i was smashed by a glowing blue sphere and flung away. I needed to stop fooling around. Our mirror selves were only focusing on themselves. "Caleb!" i called "attack one of the other ones!" and started to run towards Mirror Caleb. Caleb lunged to block a Water pulse by Mirror Me that was headed for my face. Mirror Caleb raced after Caleb, but i got in between them and blasted the guy. he was flung back by the water pulse, and i heard a **CRUNCH **as Caleb smashed Mirror Me flat with a water type smash. I had stopped paying attention to the battle and was watching Caleb again. My distraction cost me as Mirror Caleb went to attack Caleb, his Crystal Star glowing blue. I could not make it in time. "Caleb!" i screamed.

**CRUNCH!**

Mirror Caleb had not hit Caleb, rather Nincada had gotten in the way! Nincada Was flung into the far wall, instantly taken out of the fight. The fool had put himself into the path of a water type attack. Caleb shouted "Nincada!" and raced toward him, pulling out a reviver seed. Nincada simply disappeared before Caleb could get to him. "The heck?!" Caleb said, looking around. I stopped focusing on that, because i had to entertain Mirror Caleb. unlike the other two, had no cloud in his eyes. he was conscious and prepared to take us apart. Why was he conscious? is Caleb's being trapped there causing it? I glanced around. Mirror Me was disappearing, and Mirror Nincada was too. Mirror Caleb seemed to no longer have a single target. "I will run you through" he promised in a very un-Caleb like manner. His Crystal Star began to shine red. Caleb appeared next to me, His blue weapon drawn as well. It was over, and Mirror Caleb saw it. Still, he fought bravely. His powerful attacks outweighed Caleb's somehow, but he just got himself torched by my flamethrower. He fell unconscious real quick from his burns.

After he faded away, the mirror just fell apart. A staircase was behind it, and we finally, finally got out of there. As we left, Caleb asked "Nincada should be at the guild, right?"

"I think so" I answered.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

I wandered alone in the new floor. My Tangela teammates had both been wiped out in that ridiculous reflective maze. I was badly injured by that mirror clone of me. The rest of my oran berries were gone. Now, i was in a single room. The stairs i had come up had not disappeared, and there was nothing in the room. I was going nowhere near that staircase. the mirror floor was unacceptable, and i was not touching it. I moved about the medium sized room, attacking the walls, nothing was wrong. the walls broke easily, and i realized that there was nothing here. this room was a fake. i needed to find the real staircase down below in the maze. i grimaced at the thought of going back in there, but there was no choice. I walked right back down the stairs.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

Bastiodon and I walked along, mentally reviewing our latest challenges. The mirror dungeon was very problematic, and took many hours to get through. after that, the next test was ridiculously easy in comparison. We just had to walk back down the stairs, and found ourselves in our next test. Fighting ourselves was no problem at all, because the mirror versions of ourselves only focused on us. I took Mirror Bastiodon out quickly, and Bastiodon just blew my mirror self up with a flash cannon. It was over quick.

"Which way now?" Bastiodon asked. we were in front of a crossroads, and every time we made the correct choice, we fought an enemy and arrived at a different crossroads. if we took the wrong path, we just found ourselves at the first one. It was a memory game of ridiculous proportions. I shook more sparks out of my fur when Bastiodon looked away. This really hurt, but we needed to move forward. I wondered how many were here total. Bastiodon had a great memory, and we never made a mistake twice. We got to a crossroads that looked like the final one, with many images on the walls, like a relic cavern. pictures of Palkia, Dialga, a third i could not identify, an odd pokemon that looked like it was flying, and one that was surrounded by circles. We turned left, and fought an enemy, meaning we had succeeded. The pokemon was powerful, but flash cannon takes out just about anything. i fired off a shadow ball this time anyways.

"It seems we made it" i said, looking at the staircase. i wondered what the next test would be. If we could handle it. To my surprise, we surfaced in a small room with a gate. the gate was large, and made of metal bars. where you would expect a lock was a hole, shaped like a leader's badge. I immediately walked forward, and my badge shone with a brilliant light. its power made the pressure lessen in my body, and the indent on the gate shine. it swung open slowly and loudly. I walked into it, and found myself with Bastiodon in a massive room. The mission briefing correctly described the result. This treasure hunt was resulting perfectly, and above expectations. we had expected something that three teams could separate into three, but this was beyond what three teams could possibly use. the mountain of Poké and rare items and treasure in front of us would last the three teams the rest of our lives and generations ahead. Caleb and Sarah showed up with us, and Servine was there. We had made it. The Tangela were gone, and Nincada and Machoke had been defeated. Despite this, we stared at the mountain of treasure. Only one remained unimpressed. Caleb stood there, his eyes looking like he had not found what he had wanted. What did he want? What could possibly be more important to him than this treasure? It could only be something money could not buy to stop him from being excited. What could it be?

_I should ask Sarah. She will tell me. Perhaps I can learn what is up with this guy. Maybe i can learn why Sarah likes him so much. Maybe is the best i can do. Maybe._

* * *

**Things! Excitement! Character development! I hope you enjoyed!**

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**Thank you all!**

**-Hyperjade**


	11. Chapter Eleven: Homeward Bound

Chapter 11: Homeward Bound

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I stood there, honestly unimpressed by the large mountain of gold colored Poké, with tons of useful items and rare items mixed in.

_What good will treasure do me when I get back? In the human world, Poké would be useless. TMs would be useless. Berries should not keep long enough to have a permanent effect on my life, and all those treasures would just get me attacked by some prick who decided that it would be fun to jump me because of my burden. What use is pokemon treasure to me?_

Nevertheless, I realized that It would be useful while I was stuck here, and that my other teammates could use it long after I had gone. I was not going to pretend to be impressed, but I could still take my team's share. I felt Mightyena's gaze on me. I began to wander around the main mountain, walking around smaller piles of stuff, one made entirely of TMs. I stepped over several things, including sitrus berries, max elixirs, and odd trinkets that must be relics of sorts. Treasures. I ignored most of it. when I got around the mountain of stuff, I noticed a corridor in the far end of the room, which was much bigger than we had known before. It had an impressive entrance. A Kangaskhan Rock stood in here, so we would not have to make several trips.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Mightyena said, coming to me. Instead of replying properly, I pointed out the corridor and the Kangaskhan rock. "I plan on checking out that corridor first, if it is just an exit we will come back".

Sarah softly walked up to me "I'll join you"

"Me too" Mightyena said, surprising me. "Bastiodon can stay behind and keep an eye on Servine. "Hey!" Servine said, offended "I heard that!". I looked at her. she was still in front of the mountain. "I have a feeling you were supposed to" I said matter-of-factly.

She huffed and went about viewing the mountain of treasure. Bastiodon nodded to me, and the groups split off. Sarah tried to walk close to me, but I talked to Mightyena instead of paying her attention. "What did you expect?" I asked.

"A lot less treasure than we got" he replied "but I definitely thought that there would be a variety of treasure". He looked at me "you seem calmer than even an absol would in this situation".

So that did not take long. He had likely seen that the instant he saw my face when we arrived. "I know. I have other things to think about".

"Like what?" Mightyena asked me "what on earth could keep your mind off of treasure?"

"I will let Sarah fill you in" I said with finality. I looked at Sarah "You might as well tell him now" I told her "But the more delicate information should be considered confidential to other guild member's until I decide otherwise. tell Mightyena to keep that information secret". I sounded harsh, and I knew it. Mightyena knew it too, but when I looked at him, his face seemed to convey _Thank you thank you thank you. _

_What is that about? _

Mightyena and Sarah watched me move ahead. I heard Sarah sigh discontentedly, and then say "Right. This is what's up". I did not listen to any more. I walked ahead, knowing full well that that conversation could go either way. Mightyena was acting weirder than normal, and it had to do with Sarah. I'm not exactly the best with people, but Mightyena seemed smarter than to fall for my mind game. Something else changed him. He acted like you would expect a respectable being to act, unless he was with Sarah. Sarah must be the reason for his strange actions and method of speech when talking to her. Mightyena had a crush on Sarah, and he knew it.

I smiled to myself. This could work absolutely perfectly for me. Get those two together and clear the way for my departure. The only question is whether Sarah would go along with it.

_All I can do is hope._

The corridor was ending. There was a small room, and three small pillars that reached up to eye level held one item each. One item was a beautiful sphere with many colors in it that together formed a multicolored white. The next was a somewhat misshapen polyhedron, and the third looked like a yellow crystal. All three glowed with amazing power. This power I could feel straight into my bones. What were they? What were they for? They were all bigger than my head, and each looked like it was specific for something. These gems awed me so much more than the treasure back there. I could feel the power there, they must be used for something.

_Keys? Items for use in battle? What are they for?_

The white orb drew me forward, and I looked at it up close. If this thing was damaged, we would likely all go up in flames. I sensed however, that nothing could break this. It radiated an aura of power that certainly must protect it from damage. I felt that it could help me in the future. Was this sense part of my special abilities? My sense as an absol? I dont normally waste time telling myself that something useless can help me. One look at this orb and I knew that it was crucial to getting home. I needed to take this one. It was the most valuable thing we could get. Problem was, I would not exactly have a good time putting it in my bag. It was too big to fit my mouth around (i still hate doing that to pick things up anyways) and my hands, curse them, were now paws.

Mightyena and Sarah joined me. Sarah looked stressed out, and Mightyena Immediately looked at me. He glanced at Sarah, then back at me. He was less concerned with the fact that I was human and more about having permission. I nodded, and he again seemed so relieved. I walked over to him, and whispered "you don't need permission to be with Sarah. In fact, you are doing me a favor. I need to get home" Sarah could not hear me, but Mightyena had the ears of, well, a mightyena. He looked at me gratefully, and I wondered how Sarah had changed him so quick. Who knows, maybe it will work out. it certainly would for me if that happened. I was certain that Mightyena knew that he would have trouble until I was gone. I walked over to the orb again, questions still spinning around in my head.

_If Sarah can do that to Mightyena, can she do it to me? Am I in trouble if she does something to make an impression on me?_

"I will take this one" I announced "I get an odd feeling it will assist me"

Sarah immediately went to the Polyhedron "oh, but this one is so much cooler!" she said, trying to dissuade me. Perhaps There was a sense for future events after all. Or perhaps she just saw a gleam in my eye. "What are these?" I asked, and Mightyena shook his head. "I don't know" he said.

"Lets get this one back to the Kangaskhan rock" I said, going back to the Orb. "not sure how I will hold it though…".

"Ill carry it" Mightyena volunteered. "Sarah, lets bring this thing back. we should be able to do it as a team". She did not look happy about it, but I was already leaving. as I walked away, I asked "which one do you want?"

"we can take the yellow crystal" he said, now balancing the white sphere on his head (how was he managing that?) and Sarah had to help him to keep it from dropping to the floor. I walked ahead into the first room, and Servine was waiting for us. "well?" she asked.

"One room, three treasures" I said "sorry, but two have been claimed. It would have been in your best interest to come with us" She immediately began walking towards the hall. Bastiodon came up to me "do those two need help?"

"No" I said "let them do it together" he was confused until he saw the two of them, Mightyena glancing at Sarah, Sarah trying to ignore him. She gave me a betrayed look, and it hurt, but I forced myself to ignore it. Bastiodon's eyes widened. "I know" I said "but look at the effect on Mightyena. He has improved". That basically guaranteed that no interference would come from Bastiodon. Now my plan was coming together.

_I can get home. I'm coming_

I was not so certain how it would work out. The two of them were different species after all, but I suspected that that was not a barrier in this world. At least, Mightyena's actions implied that this had happened before in history. Compatibility between pokemon must be extremely complicated. Who knows, maybe it will go well.

Together, they got the orb into the Kangaskhan rock, making certain it went into ours, and Mightyena went back to the room. Sarah did not follow, in fact she was very quick in moving in the opposite direction.

_There is no chance between them until I am gone. For now, Mightyena can provide interference. I hope Mightyena understands the situation. _

It was likely that he did. Mightyena was smart. Sarah turned to me, looking hurt. I returned her gaze, forcing myself to be unyielding. I turned away eventually and looked over the pile of things we could take. I took the small money pouch from the many things attached to the bags on my back, and wondered how we could possibly fit a third of this stuff into our money bag. Using my mouth again, I scooped the bag through the money, and the money just disappeared. It looked like the bag took whatever I could grab. I was done muttering to myself about the laws of physics. That just did not seem to matter here. Things were bigger on the inside, Teleportation based on magic badges, Etc. Complaining about it was worthless. It would take me ages to get this pile properly sorted.

Just as I began to look at the other items, Servine came up behind me. "You don't seem very excited". I turned on her. She looked as disapproving as she always does when she was not looking exhausted. "You don't seem excited either" I replied "you had a look of surprise when we got here, but like me, you are not willing to waste time gawking at treasure when there are other things to deal with. We need to get this stuff all back. Is there a limit to how much this can carry?"

"Yes, there is" She answered, "but it is difficult to reach it. Duskull can hold our shares of the money easily, and Kangaskhan can easily hold all of our new items. If you can't fit any more money in that pouch, you will have to leave and come back later"

I shuddered at the thought of going back through that horrid dungeon. She saw it. "I hated that dungeon too" she said "I would not go back there"

"Do you think that we should leave some of it then?" I asked, and she shook her head. "There won't be much left to grab afterwards, and we can fill our other bags with the rest. It won't be as secure, but we could do it"

That meant that the money bags could seriously hold a lot of money. And it meant that Duskull could hold way more than that in his little bank. I wished that humankind had ways to store stuff like that. Perhaps this bag could come home with me? it would prove more useful in the human world than Poké ever could. I wonder now if Servine could help me. Should she know that I was human before?

I then started to pay attention to the item in her hands. It was the glowing polyhedron. She then wrapped it in vines and moved it over to the distant Kangaskhan rock without even looking away. "I think you should keep that item" I told her "i sense a powerful force in that polyhedron and I think it is supposed to be used for something"

"I did not intend to sell it, if that's what you are implying" she snapped at me, angry now. I had not meant to make her angry, but I realized that she was acting particularly stressed out around me. It was like she was trying to be angry with me. Was Servine actually a much nicer person? "I think that you will have a much easier time talking to people if you stop pretending to be angry at them" I told her

She stared at me for a bit. She was about to launch into denial. I looked straight into her eyes, daring her to say otherwise. Eventually, I said "please dont lie to yourself. It only causes pain"

Servine looked at me, analyzing. I had stopped her from protesting. Finally, she looked away, defeated. I felt hurt by her expression. Servine looked so pained that I knew she had understood my meaning. I hate seeing people look hurt like that, but Servine had to understand that she was only damaging the group with her attitude.

"you don't understand" she told me.

"i understand perfectly Servine" I said "I have a job to do too, and to get it done I have to be harsher than I want to be. You do not have to. You have a choice"

"And exactly what job is that?" she demanded. I looked at her. She looked fierce, despite her small size. "I need to get home" I told her, registering confusion on her face "I woke up in the Crystal Community, and I don't know the way home. Sarah wants me to stay, and I don't want to hurt her when I leave"

"So you need to make her dislike you" Servine said, finally understanding. I was glad she did not press me about my home. I was not certain if she should know of my origins. I needed her to focus. "How will we split this stuff?" I asked

"We can grab the Poké as we go" she said "once we have cleared out the money accordingly, we can decide what each team needs from the items"

"Does it really matter that we get equal money? Because I don't think it matters too much when we have this much" I realized that we were all about to become insanely rich, and it would do me almost no good. That was awkward.

"i suppose you're right" servine said "it would be so much more efficient to just start filling our bag. We'd better wait for Mightyena to begin"

We looked at Mightyena at the same time. He was attempting (and failing) to make casual conversation with Sarah. "I see…" Servine said

"Yes. Its a new plan of mine. I feel bad about it a bit, but Mightyena already seemed to feel that way. I just encouraged him"

"i see" Servine said again. She waited for a bit before speaking again. "Let's wait a bit before beginning" She said, looking at the two of them. That idea was to my benefit. "make certain that Mightyena does not forget his prize before we go"

"certainly" Servine said, and I caught a smile on her face. She was improving already. How long have I had the ability to change people like that? Have I always had an effect on others like this? I did not like controlling people, but if it was for the good of the team… What am I supposed to do?

We heard Mightyena talking to Sarah, and Sarah reluctantly answering. "I'm, uh, sorry about how I treated you when we met".

"it's fine" Sarah replied, trying to stop the conversation. She walked away, and Mightyena almost followed her, then changed his mind. He looked sad, and I walked to him. "It may be difficult to achieve anything while I am here. Once I have gone, I hope you will find it easier." He nodded dejectedly. Mightyena walked back with me to Servine. The two of us filled in mightyena about the distribution plan, and he seemed glad to get back to work "Right" he said "let's begin".

It took hours to even begin to make a difference. Servine moved so much faster than us, using vines to dig into the pile, filling her bag. We got past halfway, and Servine stopped. She had collected so much more than us that she decided that she had enough. Me and Mightyena kept on dragging the small money pouches through the massive pile, taking more and more Poké into the freaky magic bag.

It took so long to split up that money, we were utterly exhausted by the end. We tried to blink away sleep, but that was just about useless. We split up the last coins and just lay down. Servine slept soundly, and Mightyena spoke to me "how did you calm her down?"

"I let her know that she's not helping herself or anybody else by pretending she is someone she is not." He looked at me. Sarah still seemed uncomfortable, as if she was still thinking about Mightyena's new interest in her. She would not talk to me or Mightyena. It was a shame she was shunning Mightyena, but for me, this development was the best I could have managed.

_This is the biggest step forward yet. _

We eventually had to sleep. As I started to nod off, I thought once more about how useless most of this stuff was to me. At least Sarah and Nincada would be able to use it for ages. all those berries and Technical Machines and other items would not even have a use in that world. Thinking about the TM's, I wondered if I would retain knowledge of how to use my attacks. I also wondered if they could be used at all there. Swords Dance would be quite useful in my world.

As I dozed off, I imagined myself as a human again. Will that happen?

_I act so certain, but I cannot truthfully say I know for sure. Will I make it back? If I fail, I will be stuck here. This is not my home. That is why I act so certain that I will return. Not because I believe it, but because I want to believe it. The idea gives me hope, and right now that is truly the only thing I have. Actually, I now have that amazing gem. Even if it has nothing to do with getting home, It may be the only thing I take with me when I go back. That orb is mine. I should get to sleep, if I want to make the night go faster. _

…

There was a light on my eyes. The air felt warm, and I felt no pain, no reason to worry. My senses as an absol revealed no danger whatsoever.

In other words, I was back in my dream world. There was a sound of breathing near me. someone trying to sneak up. I smiled. it was not **my **dream world. It belonged to the child versions of me and Sarah. They were still not very good at sneaking around. They were about to pounce on me. This time, I would let them.

"Oof!" I faked, as the jumped on me. Like children. Like little kids that needed attention. I got up, spilling the two onto the dirt. they immediately jumped up and greeted me. "Hi Caleb!" they said "Its been so long!"

"yeah" I said "i got held up". the kids stared at me "by what?" they asked. I had told the two of them that this dream was the both of theirs instead of mine, and I had to be careful. I told them the truth "i was trapped in an area with several freaky floors, with stuff attacking me, and lots of mazes and dangerous traps". Their eyes widened, and I now lied to them "it was a portion of the dream that developed into a nightmare. Don't worry, I have taken it down".

They smiled "Thank you!" they said, and went on trying to play with me. tackling me, jumping onto me and generally having fun while I stood there. "would you guys like to go anywhere today?" I asked them, looking back and Child Sarah who had just slammed weakly into my side. She smiled at me, and Child Me said behind me "your house!" he exclaimed.

My expression turned sad. "I have not been able to summon it here. I'm sorry. I can make a new one, however". The kids watched me as I stepped forward. I cleared and flattened an area of the dream world using my mind, and considered my options. What could I build? Anything, really. I could not summon my home, but perhaps I could make something similar. I started with a path, running it from an area in front of a clearing to where the door should be. I set up the door next, dark brown. I made certain that it could just be pushed open by simply pushing. I generated the first and second floor, though they were empty at the moment. I generated the roof, which took all of a few seconds.

_I'm getting better at this_

After the exterior was completed, I pushed my way inside. The rooms were blank. I placed carpet in the upper levels, and left the lower levels with dirt floors. I located human furniture upstairs, and established one bedroom. The lower level I furnished like rooms I had seen in the guild and Sarah's crystal tree. I had built the lower levels like a pokemon would, and the upper level like I would. The kids should be comfortable down here, and I Would be comfortable up top. I could not recreate what I knew from my own home, but making beds and chairs and desks and other items was easy enough. There were two rooms for the children, one laden with crystals, and the other with natural looking decorations. I hoped they would like them.

_Why do I care so much? _

They snuck in behind me. "Wow!" they cried, immediately starting to run around in there. I looked at the two of them as they checked out the rooms, and rushed upstairs to my human style rooms.

_I care so much because they act alive. They act in ways I had not experienced before. most of all, they are clearly alive because they have a sense of time. They knew how long it had been since I last joined them here. I care because I enjoy having people to care for, instead of taking care of myself. _

That was the truth. I enjoy having people to care for, and these kids were so lifelike with their sense of time and their own memories. While I was stuck in the pokemon world, I could still have time to be carefree. I hoped that these two would be around when I returned to the human world. The two of them had already found their own rooms downstairs. I came to them. I thought you two might want rooms of your own" I told them, and their eyes lit up. "Really?" they asked.

"Of course" I replied. "go ahead and choose a room, and if you need anything changed, just ask me"

Child Sarah immediately went into the nature room, and Child me walked into the crystal room. More evidence that their decisions was not affected by my memories. Child Me looked around, and checked the slight reflections on the crystals. Child Sarah Immediately checked out the large fountain in the back, and I made the water ripple when she looked at it. She recoiled, and looked right at me. I smiled, and she gave me a _You are so busted_ look.

Once they were done checking out the place, they asked a few are the top rooms so weird? What else can you do? More questions. I told them about how I preferred the layout of the top rooms, and how I could change their rooms to however they preferred it. They told me they would let me know if they needed something, and I walked outside again to view the landscape. I could make this place be however I wanted it to be.

I reduced the High desert to a certain area, and turned three now open locations into a meadow, a hilly landscape, and for my amusement, a fancy relic like structure that had spires on it. The thing would serve as a decent training ground if I needed to teach myself how to use more moves. I hoped that would work in a dream. I looked over in the distance and placed Crater Lake there, the mountain looming above everything else.

I was so **powerful **here. This was my place to control. I set different environments over towards the other side of this little world. Forests of different types now surrounded the high desert environment. I laughed to myself as I did these things. It just felt so good to be in control of my life for once. My dreamland was mostly complete. I could add things by the kid's recommendations (or more likely begging). And as they left the building to look at the new surroundings, I asked myself when I would no longer be able to come here.

_I hope that never happens. I'm happy here. _

With finality, I spread the environment further than I could see, and placed massive mountains at the perimeter. The kids came out and were about to speak, but they noticed the change, looking about, gawking at this impressive place. I hoped that it would still be around when I was forced to leave. Knowing these kids and their apparent ability to be conscious and around while I was awake, I believed so.

_Do I really want to wake up? Reality is not my favorite thing right now. _

I had changed this dream world, now I should focus on changing my reality. It would be so much more difficult. it would have a more permanent solution, however. I steeled myself as I prepared to accept that this was in the end a dream, and I would be forced back to reality eventually. I was tackled by the two kids, distracting me from my musings. They were just so **happy**. I shook off the tackle and all depressing thoughts as they thanked me over and over for creating this for them. It really had been for them. They asked me to show them around, and before we set off into the new place I set up an interesting platform with floating crystals circling it. It seemed a bit too fancy to me, but the kids adored it. "What's that?" the asked

I had not decided yet. I walked to it, and made the crystals float further from it, making it accessible. I forced a unique pattern into the pedestal that really meant nothing at all, and then I made it glow with gold light. The fanciest teleport out there. I would set this on other places as we went along "It's a transport system to take you where you want to go" I told them. Their eyes lit up and they immediately jumped on it. Nothing happened, and they told me so. "Of course not" I said "i have not set any other's up yet"

They wanted to run around the new territory, and I went with them. They immediately walked to the meadow, full of many colors of flowers. I might change this place later, give it some sort of gimmick like changing colors over time, but for now I wondered why I made this. Meadow's never impressed me much as a human. Why did I make one now? On impulse? I am not used to having impulses. My body had changed, had my mind been messed with too?

"Caleb!" Child Sarah brought me back to… well, not reality I guess. "You're dozing off again!" again? what were they talking about? Perhaps I zone out too often. "Yeah" I said "right".

We went on, the kids occasionally tackling me or jumping on me, and despite the stress I was feeling, I did my best to play back. The meadow provided good cover for the much smaller absols. They were getting so playful and reckless that one attack actually moved me a bit. I began to forget my troubles for a bit. Why did these two kids have such an impressive impact on me? Perhaps I will never know.

I walked on with them, placing teleports around the different areas. We eventually walked to the field, and I placed a teleport there. I felt myself begin to stir. "Sorry, kids" I told them "it looks like I need to go. To use the teleport, just walk in and think of the house"

"but-" they began, but My dream was going dark. "Im so sorry that my time is always limited" I tell them "I will come by when I can. Please, if there is anything I can change for you here, let me know when I return. Have fun you two"

They again tried to touch me, to say goodbye, but my dream faded to black. As I woke up, I realized how much they must miss their favorite playmate when I am awake. It saddened me, but there was nothing I could do about it. as I opened my eyes, I realized that my vision was filled with two red eyes.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

I waited for Caleb to wake up. We needed to get a move on and distribute those items so we could go home. He frustrated me with his actions and words, and despite the fact that he was correct, and that I had to accept that I can't lie to others and expect the result to be better, I still felt resentment towards Caleb. He slept so long, too!

"Will he ever wake up?" I grumbled to the rest of the group, and the three of them looked back at me.

"Why do you want him to?" Sarah asked me "he looks so **peaceful **when he sleeps. He actually looks happy"

I saw what she meant. Whatever dream he was having, he enjoyed it much more than he enjoyed being with us. What could possibly break that calm authoritative aura of his? When Caleb slept, he looked more like someone who you could easily have a conversation with. Unfortunately, according to Sarah, his smile vanished as soon as he woke up. "I've managed to make him smile and laugh a few times" Sarah had told me "but he always shuts it down quick. I can't get anything out of him"

If Caleb was not an absol, he would have looked so much more peaceful when sleeping. Unfortunately, the form of an absol leaves little for conversation. They just scare people, and don't get much in the way of trust by others without effort. These two absol had made more friends in a few days in the guild than other absol could make in years. Thinking about that, I realized that this team Edge had managed to get this far in little more than a few days in the guild. They were absol, yes, but Caleb was clearly inexperienced in combat, and did not even seem to like fighting too much. Nincada's main ability is digging pitfalls, and while that is useful, he can't do much damage. Sarah's abilities are impressive, but she just can't face certain types of pokemon.

Still, they had taken apart two outlaws (without even knowing who they were at that) and walked away from the battle to complete their tasks. They really were impressive, but they were also clueless. I recalled the trip to the dungeon, how Caleb had tripped on absolutely nothing at all, and slammed face first into a tree.

_Now that I think about that, it really seems funny now. Regardless, They seem clueless about what they are doing. They are comical, despite Caleb's apparent seriousness. I laugh inside about it now, but they could have gotten hurt. _

It had been so long since I laughed about anything. Sarah claims that she had made this one laugh, but I never saw any humor in his eyes. In fact, he seems to have gotten worse since I met the guy. I wondered which of us would laugh first. At this rate, it would be me. Caleb was bringing me out of my frankly pathetic actions, but what could be done to help him? Perhaps I should find a way to help. "Perhaps we can find a way to improve his mood" I said slowly "let's try to make him laugh first"

"Servine? Trying to make someone laugh?" Mightyena laughed "What's up with everyone today? I think we are all going crazy now"

"It would be nice to hear him laugh again…" Sarah said. She sounded defeated. Seeing her pained like that was painful for the rest of us. It was likely that was because Caleb had finally got across to her that he had no interest in her at all. it had required a brutal message in the form of helping Mightyena get close to her. Whatever Caleb needed, I could not imagine that it could be more important than avoiding hurting someone else like that. He seemed to constantly be concerned about other's feelings. Why not now?

Sarah interrupted my musings by suddenly brightening up. "That's a great idea!" she said loudly "Let's get him to laugh!"

"This will be difficult" Mightyena said, grinning. I think anything that would make Sarah happy would be supported by Mightyena at this point. We got together and made a plan, all confident that Caleb would remain asleep as we planned. Bastiodon was not exactly interested in this development, though he gave the group an odd look before going to a pile of apples, eating one, and laying down next to it. When had we become such friends? Within minutes we had a brilliant plan. Sarah wanted to wake him up for it, but both Mightyena and I let her know that it would be best for someone else to do it. Sarah understood, though she was not happy about it. I was elected to wake him up. With utmost care, I approached the guy. I removed his sword, and we hid it in the pile of fruit. With my vines, I detached the harness containing Caleb's bag and assorted the different compartments into different piles, hiding them carefully. Finally, we waited for him to wake up. Based on his breathing, it could take minutes. I moved close to his face and we waited for his reaction. Perhaps this was rather mean of us, but according to Sarah, if we pulled this off, he should find it humorous.

Perhaps.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

_**ENEMY!**_

I lunged forward, hoping that this would catch my attacker off guard, but when I reached for Crystal Star, it was gone. Instead, I sent Glowing energy coursing through my body and prepared to run this sucker over with quick attack. As I began, I shut it down immediately. I blinked. Servine was the one there. Why was **she** so close to me?

"Wha..?" I asked, at a loss for words for once. Servine said "oh, sorry" and moved away. I had almost smashed her into the ground. She seemed unfazed however. "Do you have any idea how close you came to being smashed?" I asked her.

"Not so much, no" Servine told me "i'm used to you being in control of yourself"

"I'm used to **you **being in control of yourself!" I said, still freaking out about why she was so close to me. I stopped shifting and froze. "You're kidding" I said "you are **kidding**!" there was no way I had **two **people infatuated with me. At least Sarah's attraction to me made the tiniest bit of sense. There must be something else going on. There was. Servine had a look of mischief in her eyes, but so did the others. I realized that they expected something. of me.

_The best way to discover a secret is to play along_

That in mind, I started with what they wanted. "Where's my stuff?" I asked them. Mightyena's mouth twitched for an instant. These three were awful at lying. "Not sure" Servine said. I was unfocused from my initial assumption, and did not read her expression correctly. "we had a conversation away from you and it was gone when we returned"

_Liar_

She would have made a decent liar if I did not already understand their game. "Let's look for it" I said, moving towards the pile. On the way, I saw bastiodon sleeping alone. It appears he had nothing to do with it. I appreciated that. I sent out my senses, which those three obviously forgot about, even Sarah, who was an absol herself. Crystal star was buried deep into the main pile, deeper than I could go without disrupting the pile's stability. How those three got it there, I had almost no idea. Perhaps Servine's vines could do that?

My bags and stuff were scattered in various piles among the room. I went to the one with my treasure bag and pulled it out quick. The team's eyes widened a bit. I went and retrieved the other items and piled them in front of the group. I walked over to the large pile again, stood by it, and glared at the team. "Get it out of there" I ordered

The fact that I had not really fallen for it at all seemed to confuse the others. They knew what absol were right? They would not play some dumb joke on me for no reason. What do they want?

_Perhaps they thought that I would laugh at this._

Neither Servine nor me has laughed once this trip. I noticed that Servine was trying not to now. They were trying to get me to laugh. I was not amused in the slightest. Actually, I was slightly amused that Servine was trying to be the last to laugh, as if she was trying to achieve something. I held down my own laugh at the concept. This was my game now. "Intriguing how you of all people decided to come so close to me while I was sleeping, Servine" I told her, hoping to start something between Sarah and Servine. It did not work.

_They discussed this in detail_

"Really though" I told her "I never expected you to be so close. What on earth is possessing you today? Be careful you don't incite retribution from Sarah there"

Servine faked a look toward the other two, who looked franky mortified. Was this about to turn into a flirting war? This was not just my game anymore, Servine had caught on to a whole new game that I have not played before. "Why?" Servine asked, looking back at me "worried that she'll get herself hurt?"

Now Mightyena was ready to join, even unknowing the bigger game. "I would protect her" he promised. Sarah made a face at all of us. Bastiodon woke up and looked at us, disapprovingly shook his head, and went back to sleep. When did he become the adult one? I liked having that position. Oh well.

"You so sure you need to protect her?" I asked "Sarah doesn't exactly seem to want you to"

He looked back at Sarah, who now had the fire of revenge in her eyes. I almost smiled. She was about to get involved. "I would roast you in an instant" Sarah warned Servine, fire escaping her mouth. Mightyena went to get in between the two, and I moved in front of Servine. Now Mightyena and I faced off. "Oh, Caleb, you don't need to protect me" Servine said, playing along perfectly. Sarah moved up with Mightyena "Come on, Mightyena" she told him "let's take these two apart"

"Shall we get this over with?" Servine said, moving up next to me. Sarah snarled at her, and Mightyena snarled at me. I was not certain how to snarl intimidatingly yet, so I settled for a growl. "Yeah" I told Servine "lets get this over with"

Was this about to turn into an actual fight? I may actually need to protect Servine here if Sarah attacks. Mightyena was staring me down, and I would have to knock him down quick. Could I do that?

_I'm an idiot! crystal Star is still in the pile!_

Servine was way ahead of me. Her vines pushed into the pile and brought out my weapon "Here" she said, faking a blush. How she did that, I don't know. I don't think absols are capable of blushing. Handy thing to not have. I grabbed it "Thank you, Servine" I said, forcing some fake affection into my voice. At the moment, I was sure that it did not sound so real, but those two were so angry that it did not matter. I would have felt weird, but I was actually enjoying myself playing this joke. Sarah spit out more flames. A shadow ball formed in Mightyena's mouth. Servine readied a weird sphere that looked like a green water pulse, and I prepared my own scratch attack and readied Crystal Star. We prepared to launch into full on battle.

Bastiodon stopped us. We were all slammed aside as he blasted us away from each other. He had made a metal plate around his head and acted like a giant snow plow. We tumbled across the room, Me crashing into Servine, Mightyena rolling with Sarah. We all hit the wall. Once we all stopped, there was so much more happiness in my heart than I ever imagined I would in this world. It was just so **fun**!

Sarah was about to kill us, but…

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I was going to wipe Servine off the map.

_She took Caleb from me!_

Servine was going down. I was on my feet, a flamethrower prepared. Mightyena was also up. What was with that guy. Bad dude one day, in love with me the next. I was not interested. Caleb seemed to want me to be. He was using Mightyena as a distraction. I would roast him later, and I think Mightyena will help me. Mightyena had a giant shadow ball in front of his face. My flamethrower was in a ball in my mouth, waiting to be fired. How had our plan gone so badly? That blasted Servine had Caleb as serious as ever.

Bastiodon was going to stop us, but this time I would burn him down if he got in the way. What we saw next made both of our attacks disappear pathetically. Caleb and Servine were **laughing**. Caleb stood there, laughing almost as hard as when he pulled that joke on me, and Servine was rolling on the floor laughing. The laughing filled the room, breaking every feeling of anger. Mightyena's and my own astonishment did not disappear as we watched the two of them Showing such unprecedented glee and happiness. We just stared. They just laughed. Bastiodon was looking calm again, having discarded his metal plate, he laid back down and went to sleep.

My jaw and Mightyena's jaw just hung open as we watched the two of them desperately try to stem the flow of laughter. They failed miserably. they broke into new laugher, this time not as loud and uncontrollable. Caleb and Servine took several minutes just to calm down. "I win" caleb chuckled. "at what?!" Servine laughed.

"I got you to laugh before me".

"Not so!"

"Yeah! Five whole seconds before I broke down. I win!"

"We totally started laughing at the same time!"

"Not so!"

They broke into new laughter. Caleb was playing a game with us instead? Servine had caught on and turned it into a two versus two? They were **joking!?**

Mightyena had reached a similar conclusion, but he was not thinking enough to shut his jaw. Caleb noticed this, and pointed it out to Servine. She started laughing again, and Caleb was reduced to frenzied chuckles. Mightyena shut his jaw finally. "W-what?" he managed. "We lose" I told Mightyena "We wanted to make him laugh, and he made himself laugh instead. We lose".

He nodded "I see that".

"Really?" I asked "you look brain dead right now".

He shook his head violently to clear it. Was that a black spark coming off of his fur? I was imagining it. His fur was black mostly, and it could easily have been a ripple in his fur.

_Wait. I noticed that? Am I really falling for this?_

Finally, Mightyena said "i need a nap". he looked at me "care to join me?"

I looked at Caleb. He was so much happier than I have ever made him. What should I do? I wanted above all else to be with him, but that was probably misguided. Nevertheless, I was not giving up until he was gone. I looked at Mightyena, about to decline. His eyes said _Please._

Caleb did not love me. That hurt so much. Mightyena did love me. That hurt almost as much. Nothing but pain was coming for us if this did not get resolved.

_I will catch him off guard over time, and get him later. Caleb used Mightyena, and I can too. Watch me beat you at your game, Caleb. _

"Sure" I said, and his face lit up. I was tired too. Did I really want to do this?

_Maybe, just maybe, Caleb will feel jealous. _

He laid down and simply slept, and I laid down next to him. I prepared myself for later. What would happen? I fell asleep wishing that things were easier.

I woke up slowly. I registered a rock like thing in front of me. Not getting up, I viewed Mightyena out of the corner of my eye. He was just waking up, too. I heard Caleb's voice, and before I could check, I registered his words "You two lovebirds need to cool off!"

The stone was turned over, and it was hollow, not to mention full of water. We leapt to our feet, faces soaking with freezing, wet water. I stared at Caleb, who was laughing again. Servine was laughing from over where she was standing near a massively reduced pile of stuff. She called to us from the pile "Mightyena, we have split what we need from the pile. The rest is yours".

Mightyena was not massively happy about having last pick, but Caleb reminded him that they themselves had not given Servine much choice in her artifact. It worked out because The two leaders had made certain that Mightyena had what he needed. Mightyena shook water off of his face, and laughed with Caleb and Servine this time. I found it funny this time too, and laughed. We were all friends now, and those two had lightened up for now. Finally, we walked back to the entrance.

"Hang on…" Caleb said, looking out of the square entrance to the dungeon. It lead out into a grassy field with flowers, and a few trees. It took the rest of us a minute to realize what it was.

The rest of us gasped as we realized what we were looking at. It was not the place that we had entered the dungeon in! There was no waterfall blocking the entrance, and the trees were the wrong type; taller, more branches. There was the sea, visible dead ahead. "Where are we!?" I asked.

Mightyena immediately pulled out his map and looked at it. By using electric aura, he activated the badge's ability to tell us where we were on the map. Our images showed up on the other side of the freaking **continent**. We all stared at the map, looking blankly at our images at the base of a stretch of land leading out into the ocean. Luckily, we did not end up at the end of that. Finally, Servine spoke up "it seems we have quite the trip ahead.

"Yeah…" caleb said, and then suddenly brightened. "Well, looks like we have plenty of time to talk! Why not go slowly. The guild expected us to take more time than this anyhow"

"You know what?" Servine said "that sounds like a great idea"

Servine had changed. That much was clear. Caleb wanted to move slowly for some reason. His find in the dungeon had really excited him. Did he think that this was some sort of clue? It was not like Caleb to be so hopeful. Perhaps he has become desperate to reach home, and was willing to take anything he could get. Perhaps he would be happy for a while. "Let's go then" I said "Homeward bound!"

The others cheered their approval except for Caleb. I had meant the guild, But he heard something else. "Homeward Bound" he repeated "I loved that movie".

"Huh?" I asked.

"What?" Mightyena asked.

"Pardon?" Servine asked.

"Skip it" was his reply.

And we began to walk through the fields.

* * *

**Hey, everybody!**

**Thank's for tuning in to the most recent chapter of The Absolite Chronicles: Book 1**

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**-Hyperjade**

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**A basic Fill In the Blank for Character design:**

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	12. Chapter Twelve: Legends

Chapter 12: Legends

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

After the slight scare of having popped out of the ground at the other side of the continent, we had a nice time getting back. It would take us four days, and none of the others were in a hurry. They joked and laughed, and I joined them. Sarah was treating everybody about the same now, and the only one having a poor time was me. The problem was that pressure in my body. I had to shake those stupid sparks out of me twice a day now. We walked along, talking about past experiences (well, Servine, Bastiodon and I did mostly) and laughed about victories and failures that were hilarious in nature. Sarah recalled fighting the marshtomp, and all but Caleb had a laughing fit about him being stuffed with mud.

"It wasn't that funny" he protested.

"Oh it's funny" Sarah said "you flopped around for a bit, almost got hit with the recoil of vacuum cut, and blacked out in the weakest way possible". We howled with laughter about that, and Caleb looked away to hide his embarrassment. We walked for several miles before resting, and when we laid down, Caleb promptly broke through the ground and fell into a pit. We circled the pit and looked at him. he stood there, looking up "a pitfall" he muttered "I should have been more careful".

We laughed at him some more, but then **I** dropped into a pit right next to him. "What?" I asked, and the others immediately became wary. Turns out we were not the only ones out in this field who were having fun. More traps opened up, spilling Servine and Bastiodon into pits. The ground shook as Bastiodon slammed down. Sarah jumped away as another one opened up underneath her, but immediately landed in another one. We were separated in little pits. Then, the holes were covered. I thought I might jump out, but as I was preparing to, the hole got deeper. Who was doing this?!

"Hey!" I heard Sarah call from a pit nearby, close enough for the sound to reach through the soft dirt. "son of a…" Caleb's voice came from next to me. There was a sound of laughing above us, and my ears picked up the voices clearly. My eyes widened.

_Some game you four are playing right now… Thanks…_

Why were they here? how did they know how to find us? perhaps they got lucky, but they should not be wandering around the freaking country looking for us. The others in the pits did not hear what I heard, but I heard a crash as Servine used vines to clamber out of the deep pit. I heard her make a sound of surprise, and "How..?"

Servine continued to stammer, and the other three had heard none of it. Caleb, however, was actually using his senses. "Why are they here? Searching for us was dangerous! and to play a trick…"

So Sarah and Bastiodon were the only clueless ones. Sarah was an absol, but she always forgot to use her sense. well, if privacy was ever an issue...

But now I was concerned. Were they all right? Had they gotten here unharmed? we had all of the materials with us. How did they get food?

I heard a **clang **beneath me as the pokemon tried to dig another pitfall "What's this?" he asked, and I promptly fell through the ground onto him. I took my foot off of him and looked down on the bug. His small eyes looked at me, and back at the metal plate he had found.

_Oh great. More treasure. Kangaskhan has already been given a workout trying to help us with this stuff. What else?_

A claw tapped my foot, and I looked down at the little guy. "Mighty irresponsible of you, coming all this way looking for us" I told him.

Nincada made a noncommittal gesture, and I grew a little frustrated "you realize that you are responsible for getting us all out now" I told him. Nincada immediately began to dig, but not before getting out the metal disk with all sorts of inscriptions on it. There must have been thousands of these things buried around the world if we had just happened to find one. It had lots of pokemon inscribed on it, surrounded by circles that seemed to represent tiers, or maybe generations. Nincada Pushed it over to me. How had the little guy gotten so strong?

"So you, the Tangela, and Machoke just decided to waltz along into the wilderness to find your team leaders, with absolutely no idea where you are going or how you could possibly find us?" I asked him.

"It wasn't exactly an immediate decision" Nincada said, confusing me "It took a whole week before we started worrying, and two more days until we launched search parties".

_WHAT?!_

"A WEEK?!" I asked him. We were gone three days, max. what on earth was this bug talking about?

"A month" Nincada said bluntly, and I felt like I **really **needed to get back to the surface. Caleb was going to go freaking **crazy** when he heard this. No wonder Nincada was stronger, he had been training for a month while the rest of us fought our way through mirror mazes and statue mazes and horrible puzzles. He is much stronger than a Nincada should be. He could go evolve at any time. I made an executive decision, grabbing the disk before telling Nincada to get us to the surface. Seeing my urgency, he immediately complied. Caleb, Sarah and Bastiodon joined me shortly. Bastiodon was calm, Sarah and Caleb were frustrated. Caleb's sword was beginning to become red "cool it" I told him, and he reluctantly complied.

As we got out, we saw Servine being squished in a tangela group hug, and Machoke was grinning at me. Servine was getting crushed, and seemed in pain. "Ow" she groaned "it's great to see you too…"

I was looking at her too long, and was suddenly was squashed as Machoke gave Bastiodon and I a painful, crushing hug. He must really have missed us. As when I have seen Bastiodon get such a hug, we almost fainted right there. Sarah was laughing at us, and Caleb was holding back a chuckle again. "Nincada" Caleb said "how did you find us so quickly?"

_Panic time._

"Quickly?" Nincada asked, confused. I had forgotten to explain to Nincada the situation and Caleb was in for a blunt surprise. I could not stop Nincada without oxygen in my lungs and my ribs nearing the breaking point "You guys have been gone for an entire month. They eventually sent teams out to look for you".

Caleb froze. Sarah froze. Servine could not hear, being enveloped in the vines of the two tangela. "...What?" Caleb said, his voice shaky and worried.

_He needs to get back to the human world. He just lost a month of time. _

I still could not believe that he was human before, just like Jake. He was nothing like Jake, him being so serious and quick to switch between anger, calm, and happiness. Jake always identified with others, particularly Swampert, a mudkip at the time. Caleb was too serious. Maybe the fact that Caleb retained his memory had something to do with it. Caleb wanted above all else to get home. Jake apparently did not have that goal, likely because he was an amnesiac. That made sense.

"We were only gone a few days" Sarah informed Nincada.

"Sorry, but none of us have seen you in a month and three days" Nincada "the rest of us have been carrying on the team's duties during your absence". Nincada was speaking formally, like he had gotten used to being professional. How many adventures had Nincada and the others gone through while we were gone? Because they are technically part of other teams, it must mean that Nincada would be going through dungeon after dungeon on his own doing missions. No wonder he was much stronger.

Caleb was still frozen in place. "We only experienced a few days!" he protested. Sarah looked at him, and Servine escaped the group hug and walked over, asking us what this was about. When we told her, she freaked out.

"What?!" she cried out "**WHAT?!** Are you kidding me?! We were in there for four days, tops!". Being released from Machoke's death grip, I caught my breath while I absorbed the information. There were basically two possibilities. Either time was messed up, which is unlikely considering Dialga was back in control of temporal tower, or…

"The stone puzzle" I blurted out, causing the other eight people to look at me "I'm not sure, but the closest explanation is that when we were put to sleep, we missed an entire month".

Servine's eyes widened, and Caleb said "My dreams have been in real time recently. I did not dream at all there, and it felt immediate. That means…". His eyes suddenly widened. "oh, no…"

"What is it?" Servine asked, looking worried about it. Caleb looked around at all of us, and I saw guilt in his eyes. Was he guilty about his family and friends missing him for a month? "It-it's nothing" he stammered. Why was he keeping Servine in the dark? Servine was clearly a loyal friend. She could help Caleb as well. I would tell her later.

Caleb will get home eventually. Sarah will accept that, and everything will be almost the same. Almost, but better.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

_An entire month…_

I refused to believe it at first, but as soon as Mightyena mentioned that stupid rock, I wondered if that thing had really knocked us out for a month. I was feeling guilty, despite my lack of control in the situation. It was not my home that concerned me as much to my surprise. The guilt came from my realization about my dream world.

_Those kids waited a month for me. I had no idea it was a month! They told me it had been so long, and I brushed it off, thinking they meant I had just not slept in a while. If that's really the case, why did I not have a month long dream with them? what really happened?_

The two of them either had to wait an entire month for me, or we time warped somehow. If the former… I'm so sorry. How did they not give up on me? It seems unlikely that we could have literally gone forward in time, yet I still knew basically nothing about the mechanics, or lack thereof, in this world. Was time travel possible here? I hoped so at this point. I felt exhausted, and that I needed some sleep. I just got some sleep! Does stress drain physical energy in pokemon? I was about to fall asleep on my feet now. Mightyena was looking between me and Servine. He had misunderstood my hesitation to talk. I looked back at the guy, and I said "Go ahead", sounding defeated. I turned on the spot and laid down like a dog. I was as tired as one after a game of fetch anyhow. Man, my life is weird.

_Night, everyone. _

I was sitting at the door to a house. My dream world. It brought a smile to my face immediately. Suddenly, I was attacked playfully. A new record for these two. "Caleb!" Child Sarah cried out as she jumped me "It's you!"

"Yeah, it's me" I said, "But I have an important question for you". They stared at me, confused "what?" Child me asked.

"How long was I gone when you said it had been 'so long'?" I asked. The answer of this meant how long we were actually gone. If I slept for a month without seeing them, we really had slept for a month. If not, It could have been some time situation where we were moving slower than the rest of the group. Actually, the slowdown happened sometime between the defeat of our teammates and our success.

"It was maybe two and a half days" Child Me said, and I sighed with relief "What is it?" Child Sarah asked. I took a moment before answering "I had a scare where I came from where a month passed by in a few days. I feared I had left you two alone for a month. I'm so relieved that you guys were OK".

They nodded, smiled in the way innocent children do, and began jumping about, ready to do something. We continued our trek through the environment after I made certain that the kids were happy with their home. I added a crystal mirror like Sarah's to Child Caleb's room, and Child Sarah wanted her room to Change environments every day, like different colored grass and other changes to see whenever she woke up, and she wanted her little fountain to have more color. After those changes, they wanted me to make the meadow more vibrant, and I went ahead and made it change color occasionally, but not often.

_This place is shaping up well._

We hiked up to Crater Lake, And I placed one of the last teleporters. Now we could go just about anywhere. I had to remember to permanently heat up the lake before those children raced into it again. They called for me to join. I wondered if I should. I have not tried swimming yet at all. Would this be a good place to learn, without judging eyes on me? I warned the kids about my slight issue with swimming, and just tried to start of in a shallow point or something. This was crater lake (at least a decent knockoff) and I had forgotten that it mostly goes **down**.

I took a few seconds to design a shallow bit in the water, and slowly got in. I realized that I now feared drowning. If I did not learn to swim now, I would experience extreme embarrassment later. "You never learned to swim?" Child Sarah asked. "Not like this" I replied "new body, haven't tried swimming yet".

"What do you mean?" Child Me asked curiously. If I could tell anybody, I could tell these two. They could not be kept into the dark. "I have not been an absol forever" I told them "i used to be human".

My child counterpart tilted his head, and Child Sarah did likewise "What's a human?" Child Me asked. Of course, they had no idea what a human was. This was the first time they even heard the word. "It's just what I used to be" I said, now sounding a little sad "i woke up as an absol recently".

They seemed to just accept that, and did not press me. Perhaps I just looked so sad about it. I felt sad, but it was dull, like I had accepted it somewhat. If I accepted it, would I forget my mission? I chased that thought away with the warm water. It was warm because I had made it warm, like some incredibly large hot spring. It felt much better than I think it would have done if I were human. It calmed me like some physical reaction was actually going on in my body, calming me. I waded deeper, until I had to paddle a bit. My paws did not make the best contact with the water, and I made little impact. I tried to do it differently, and eventually found that by spreading my claws, the skin between them at the base stretched out a bit so it was like the skin between human fingers. With my claws spread, I could make traction with the water.

The kids cheered (_so embarrassing…_) when I succeeded in getting myself above the water easily, and swimming was now possible. I managed to learn quickly, but I was disoriented whenever water got in my eyes. I did not even see those kids coming before they were on top of me, ready to swim around. My embarrassment disappeared as the kids got me to entertain them. I swam all the way out to the island in the lake, and eventually got out. This island took a while to get to, so I put a last teleporter there. That was it.

The kids walked out behind me, shaking water out of their fur. How did they do that? I tried, but the water stayed in my fur mostly. My horn clipped a tree trunk, and I immediately fixed the damage. I ought to be more careful. Despite the fact that I was utterly exhausted from my swimming across a giant lake without the best traction, those kids were ready to jump all over me again. I did not even resist. my legs hurt, and I still needed to improve my efficiency. I was toppled by the next tackle and they pinned me down. I was still strong, and managed to escape their pin. The small absols laughed and went on jumping at me.

"Okay, getting tired" I eventually called out "feel free to calm down"

They immediately tackled me with even more energy, knocking me down. "Gah…" I muttered, not about to fight back. I just basically laid there for a bit, resting. I noticed that my horn was in the ground. "Hey" Child Sarah said, "you alright?" now looking worried. "I need rest" I got out. I felt so tired. It seems I can't control every aspect of my dreams, because I can't regain my energy by thought. Perhaps that would come with time. "You guys just do whatever, as long as it's safe" They immediately started to play again, and I just watched, using a little bit of energy to get out of the ground as smoothly as possible and lay on my stomach. They tried to climb a tree, and kept falling, though they seemed undamaged when they fell on the they appeared hurt, I would stop them in an instant. Watching them get hurt was not something I wanted to do.

Eventually, they got high enough that when they fell, it could hurt. I lunged with energy I did not know I had, and caught Child Sarah from crashing down. Child Caleb had managed to land on a branch. When I set her down, I lost the energy, and laid back down promptly. What was up with me? I still had no energy? "Please come down" i said upward "and be careful".

Child Me complied, and soon was with the two of us again. Child Sarah looked tired too, and laid down next to me. I mean **right **next to me. This was not Sarah's attempts at getting me interested, This Sarah was a child looking for warmth. Child Me did likewise. "If we go to sleep, i may have to leave eventually. Don't be worried if i am not there when you wake. I put a teleporter at the island, and it should be easy to find. You guys know how to use it right?"

"Yeah…" Child Sarah said tiredly, pressing closer.

"Yes" Child Me said, doing likewise. They were both tired. I was falling asleep. I allowed myself to close my eyes, and immediately opened them back in the real world.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

We walked along, moving slowly back to the guild. It should take us about four days at a walking pace. The eight of us were joking around again. For us, strange things were a common occurrence. For Caleb, well, things were going to go poorly. One other was not laughing much: Mightyena. Sarah had insisted on carrying Caleb's unconscious body on her back. Caleb snored like a snorlax. Mightyena looked at the two of them sadly, and i kept glancing at Caleb. Human? Okay. I could accept that. The problem was how he did not want to tell me what the issue was that he was stammering about. It was not home. I know what homesick pokemon look like, and Caleb may have used to be human, but it can't be that different. The problem was that Caleb looked **guilty **about something, like there was some responsibility he had messed up. This was the only job he had; What was up with that guilt in his voice?

Caleb groaned, and opened his eyes. He was facing me, balanced on Sarah's back. After a few moments, he noticed where he was. He immediately jumped off and crashed against the ground unceremoniously. He scrambled up and backed away. He looked apprehensive, but he relaxed. Did he dream something that resolved his guilt? Could he dream about the future? Was it similar to the dimensional scream? I was getting ahead of myself, and i heard Sarah sigh. Mightyena and Caleb shared a glance, and at Caleb's nod, Mightyena came closer to Sarah.

"Caleb…" Sarah said, prompting Caleb to look at her. Caleb's glare drove straight into her eyes. She backed down reluctantly. Caleb walked away, over to Nincada "you have been carrying on the duties of the team?"

"Yes" he answered "Doing so alone has allowed me to boost my strength and learn swords dance".

Swords dance? Nincada can't learn swords dance even by Technical Machine, unless… A pokemon can learn a move by Technical Machine if they are a level that an evolved form of them would learn it naturally. Ninjasks are capable of learning swords dance at the twenty fifth level. That means that Nincada is in fact ready to evolve.

"Excellent" Caleb said "you seem to have improved exponentially. Thank you for keeping an eye on the team's duties". Nincada then looked in the bag he carried, and pulled out a badge. this one was silver. "While you were gone, our team bypassed the bronze rank and achieved silver rank".

Caleb blinked "really now?" he asked "how long did that take?" Nincada answered: "We barely achieved silver rank before we officially started to look for you guys".

Caleb looked like he was either going to take another nap or eviscerate something. Finally, he looked away. "Right" he said, walking away. Nincada watched him for a bit, then went to Sarah and climbed onto her back "we should get moving".

We were not joking anymore. We began moving along, we were nearing a cavern that may cut off a day of travel (or go in a big loop). Problem was, it was a mystery dungeon. Caleb chose this time to break his silence. "I have a few questions for you, Mightyena".

"Go ahead" he said, aware that this was serious. Caleb asked first "did you ever find anything at that pillar?"

"No" Mightyena said "It seems to just be a black floating pillar. Nothing happened near it. It had blackened the grass nearby it, but the grass wasn't dead. It did not shift when i tried to push it. Nothing".

"Second" Caleb continued, unfazed by the failure to get information on… whatever it is they're talking about "what is that disk?"

Mightyena looked at the disk strapped onto his back. "It seems to be some form of historical relic, probably a form of timeline. See how the pokemon are arranged in segmented rings? There's Dialga and Palkia there near the center, with one other pokemon next to them, and the center ring has Mew and another strange pokemon. along the other rings are different pokemon from legend". Mightyena put the item on the ground and we stopped.

I walked to it, trying to identify the different pokemon on the disk. Some of them had different images under them, like objects that had to do with them. The strange pokemon next to Mew had rectangular objects circling it, there was a few items among others, But my eyes widened as i recognized three items. **Our **items. The circle underneath Palkia, My polyhedron underneath Dialga, and Mightyena's crystal underneath the third. "Look" i breathed, pointing them out.

MIghtyena's eyes widened a bit, and Caleb blinked. Sarah was not even listening, sitting by herself, back turned. Nobody could see her face. What was she doing? Nincada ha climbed off of her and joined us. The tangela, Bastiodon and Machoke were there with us, but not exactly seeing what we were. Finally, Caleb spoke. "Who is that pokemon?" he asked, placing a claw on Palkia.

"That's Palkia" I said "governor of space".

Caleb's eyes widened with surprise and realization. "Space?" he said "including the dimensions?" His eyes shone with hope now. He was right: If anyone could handle travel between worlds, Palkia could. It seemed that Caleb had also chosen the correct item that corresponds to Palkia. In the background, Sarah's head visibly lowered as she overheard. She understood too. Mightyena got it, smiling. "Looks like you're next mission is to find Palkia, Caleb".

Caleb smiled "looks like it" he said "This is good luck for me. I'm surprised that we just happened to find this, but I am so glad we went through with the mission now". He was in a good mood, and this one may be lengthy. He still seemed to not be in a rush when we continued, and now he joked and talked with the rest of us. Im glad he gets a chance to go back home. The only one not exactly talking was Sarah unsurprisingly.

"Servine" Caleb said "are there any events coming around in the next few weeks that we should know about?"

He expected to be gone by then, so he must be asking for Nincada's and Sarah's benefit. "Most days, daily life is taking job requests and doing work for the guild. In about five weeks however, The guilds across the world are supposed to convene for a competition that occurs every ten years. Almost all teams in the world will be involved. You probably don't plan to be there for it though…"

"Yeah…" he said "but my team should be capable of continuing after that". He suddenly turned to me sharply "Five weeks after now? Or five weeks after we were supposed to exit from that dungeon?"

"Five weeks from now" i answered "are we going into this dungeon here or what?"

"We are" Caleb said, and with a nod from the rest of us, we plunged into the dungeon.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

This dungeon made every single one of us sigh with relief. It was **normal**. However, according to team ivy and team rush, this was not one that is recorded. It seems that this was the exploring part of being an exploration team. first was rescue, then treasure hunting, and now the namesake of the teams. What was up with that coming last? I get that it would be difficult to find new places nowadays, but come on.

I was able to show off my new strength when we discovered that the cave was populated by mostly electric types. The cave was very interesting. The deeper we got, the more of the rocks were glowing blue and full of electricity. Small rocks were attached to the large boulders, just attached to the side. Mightyena pulled a small one back a few feet. When he let go, it flew back and slammed into the stone. Caleb got close "magnetism" he declared, and the rest of us looked at him as we tried to swallow the human word. "what exactly is magnetism?" Servine asked.

"Magnetism is a physical phenomena based on magnetic fields" he said, confusing us even more. "The source of magnetism is electric currents generating fields. Positive energy attracts negative energy, and magnetic fields have a positive point and a negative point. The rocks attract each other if they are the opposite charge" Caleb pulled a small stone away from the boulder. "I don't know which is which like this. We don't have stuff like this around our planet. Good enough to keep"

He pocketed the round object in his bag, and began to continue. Mightyena and Servine each took one as well, still flabbergasted by his somewhat unhelpful explanation. It was informative, but his speed in explaining it had caused half of our eyes to glaze over, and the rest of us simply did not absorb the information. I tried to wrap my head around it.

_Magnetic fields, positive and negative energy, positive attracted to negative. Huh? Fine._

I would figure it out later. For now, we were surrounded by those boulders now as we walked deeper into the dungeon. There were enemies of course, but between my own dig attacks and team Ivy's attacks, they were knocked out quick. No attacks other than electric were used, and i was an effective shield sometimes. The boulders were in the ground, but occasionally there was a corridor where the boulders were loose. these corridors were completely avoided by the electric types, and we found out why.

"**Son of a..!" **Caleb called out as the group was almost crushed as two giant boulders shook loose of the ground and smashed together, effectively blocking the tunnel and almost turning Servine and Caleb two dimensional. We backed up quick. "I could not even **sense **that!" Caleb said "We caused it, no other explanation. We made noise, and shook the ground a bit, and that was enough. I can't sense spontaneous events until they are happening".

"Sorry" Bastiodon said. Mightyena turned "it's alright Bastiodon, we had no clue what dangers there are".

You would think that we would get used to the new Mightyena. However, we still blinked or recoiled in confusion at his prompt forgiveness. I decided to interrupt this particular nice moment "we best turn around and keep moving. We don't know how deep this cave is".

"Yes" Caleb said. "Let's go" Servine said. We turned away, moving much slower now. Bastiodon was very careful not to shake the ground too much. A Mareep walked out and attacked Caleb, but he blocked with his weapon, and stuck the pokemon down. Despite the fact that the weapon became an electric type weapon, he was able to take down the mareep easily.

We walked along a hallway and into a room. It had lots of stuff on the floor, but the leaders ignored it all. Apparently, they had found so much stuff that these thing did not interest them in the least. we got to the middle of the room

"Servine" i asked "can you explain that competition you were speaking of?"

"Sure" she said, stopping. The rest of us stopped with her. "The entire thing is in three sections, each lasting a **really **long time. most teams are required to compete, from every corner of the world. Some have guilds, some do not. Because the competition is so close, we already know of some of the teams involved. From a continent to the north that had no guild, rescue team Amber is guaranteed to show up. from zoroark's guild to the far west, we have heard that team Hunt, team Titanium, and team Heart will come along. There will be many more, but those are the names that are circling now. The first competition is team based, but the second is one on one. The matches are always random, and you can even end up fighting your own teammates. the third is actually a massive treasure hunt where the different guildmasters are hiding in dungeons with different treasures, and your team has to get back to the guild in the region with all seven treasures. teams will be against each other, but can only fight if either team has a treasure in their possession. Leaders are required to display the treasure. We did not do well ten years ago, because we had become a team only days before it started. Me and the tangela were taken out quick" She explained.

"So the competition is held in this region?" Caleb asked "also, you have been a team for ten years?"

"This continent is the central to the others, and all teams can get here easily because of the normally calm seas. Yes, we have-"

Servine was interrupted by a powerful lightning attack, throwing her into a wall. We immediately searched the room. We had let our guard down! We saw nobody in the room. What the heck was going on?

Servine struggled to her feet, badly damaged but ready for battle. Grass types should not be so heavily affected by lightning, so that attack must have been powerful. Where on earth was that attack from? We looked about, and suddenly the tangela cried out from behind me. I went to look, and the two of them were smoking on the ground. A pokemon stood above them, sparks coursing through his fur. It had a thin tail with a star at the end, and had red and yellow eyes. I shuddered as i looked at it, and i felt my abilities drop.

_Intimidate_

"How dare you intrude?!" He roared at us. **Literally **roared, and we went flying. we piled up on the far wall, Caleb underneath Sarah, and Mightyena on top of her, all dizzy and useless for the moment. I caught the ground with my claws and shot underground before my momentum carried me into the pile. Under the ground, i felt the pokemon look straight at me through the ground "come out little bug…" he said. How could he see me? i moved, and he followed me with his eyes. My friends weren't moving except for bastiodon, who was pretending to be down for the count but slowly shifting to face the pokemon. Problem was, that pokemon could easily tell where i was. I think Bastiodon was in for a surprise. His cover would certainly be blown if i went to him. What was with this guy? I needed to attack. I was not afraid.

I dug toward him quickly, but digging is only so fast. the pokemon simply walked away from me, and towards the group. I surfaced "Don't hurt them!" i said, setting my claws aglow with a lime green light. he looked at me with something resembling contempt, and fired a thunderbolt that rivaled Jake's. I was unaffected, and this guy apparently did not know how to identify ground types. He growled and forgot my friends on the ground. Taking down seven pokemon at once meant this fool was powerful, but he was still a fool. he charged me, another electric attack prepared, and just for the sake of keeping him occupied, i went underground again. i still had my claws glowing, and i tried to get to him. He was just too fast for me to dig. He charged me when i surfaced, his body coated in electricity. I let him hit me, his attack stopping cold because it was an electric attack. My claws rose up and slashed a painful 'X' into his face. He yowled and roared at me again. Because i could dig my claws into the ground, i could stop myself from being launched. This pokemon was not beating me, no matter how powerful. I heard him growl, and then he glowed a bright white and blinded me.

when the spots cleared from my eyes, he was surrounded by a ton of electric types. How had they gotten there? they were all quadrupedal, and all were clearly electric types. i recognized shinx and electrikes from my mission in the amp plains.

_These two must be the evolved forms of these small ones. There appears to be a stage between the shinx and the pokemon that attacked us. _

The other one in question was yellow and blue, and quadrupedal, and a similar height to the first. She spoke in a female voice "Why have you come here?" she demanded. While the first pokemon was willing to attack on sight, she seemed to want to interrogate me. I did not want my friends to get hurt. "We were passing through, hoping to cut some time off of our journey by using this cave" i said strongly, forcing the fear out of my voice. "Don't think you can lie to us!" the female leader yowled at me "This cave is a dead end, and only our home is here. You are trespassers! You will be defeated!

_Why would you ask a question if you won't listen to the answer?_

They charged at me. All of them. One nincada against an entire family of electric types. The ground vibrated as two dozen pokemon all charged at once. With electric type moves. Game over. I was ready to fight, and no matter how long it took, it would be me that was victorious. My claws glowed again as i prepared for battle

_I won't let you hurt my friends._

* * *

**Case in point. Cliffhanger. Hope you enjoyed the chapter, please review my work, and tell me what you think. Feel free to follow the story if you wish to obtain updates via email on my chapters. Thank you all for reading, and have a nice day!**

**?: What's up?**

**Me: Wha?!- What are you doing in my authors notes?!**

**?: Just decided to say hi**

**Me: get out of here! You aren't even alive until book three! How are you here of all places?! That should be impossible!**

**?: What makes you believe i'm just going to leave? Also, I can do whatever i want. **

**Me: I'm the writer, Jango, i can do whatever i want with the story. Get out of here if you don't want to be mortally embarrassed later. My readers don't need spoilers. I don't need you breaking the laws of physics on a daily basis. Yes, the laws of physics matter here. **

**Jango: Is there something you don't want me to read?**

**Me: Shut up, Jango**

**Jango: Fine. *leaves***

**Me: anyways, sorry about that. I will include the format for character ideas in this authors notes again. Feel free to send me ideas!**

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:  
**


	13. Chapter Thirteen: Sparks Fly

**Jango: Hey, guys! I know i'm not supposed to be here. Just wanted to say hi. I should be able to chat with you guys before the chapter starts for the most part, unless Hyperjade has something to say. Please don't tell Hyperjade that i'm here. He's threatened that i would have to tell my point of view for a certain future story if I spoil anything. Thing about that is that i'm from further in the future than you might think (Thanks Dialga). I found my way here. Hyperjade will assume i'm trying to spoil stuff. I don't really want to recount that embarrassing day. He's the writer after all, he can make me do it. **

**So i'll just chat with you guys here OK? Just don't tell Hyperjade. Please.**

**He's coming now to tell you the next part of the story. I'd better get out of here fast. See y'all next time!**

* * *

Chapter 13: Sparks Fly

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

The large group of pokemon crashed into me and piled on top, not having learned their lesson from the first attack the first electric type used. As they collapsed on top of me, I dug down. They did not have the best teamwork, all trying to clamber up at once. I heard a roar, and pure force rippled through the hole I had dug. That powerful shinx evolution was increasing his power! I dug up instead, and surfaced underneath one of the shinxes, blasting them from underground, and knocked it out cold. The small ones must be just kids, and it made me uneasy to fight them. Unfortunately, the female electrike evolution saw that, and made a howl of rage. She suddenly appeared stronger, as if the howl had increased her power. She launched a weird sphere of electricity. when it hit me, she and the male leader switched places suddenly. what was that? I was stopped in my thinking when the pokemon's teeth began to glow. He was going to use bite, and attack that can actually hurt me.

I went ahead and stopped it by slashing another 'X' into his face. My claws have a better range than teeth (obviously). He recoiled and the female asked "are you alright, Luxray?"

"Im fine, Manectric" Luxray growled, and tried to bite me again. I stayed calm and held him back with my own attack, and then dug down. I needed to do more damage than that if this was going to go as fast as I wanted to. I needed space, though. I surfaced nearby some smaller pokemon, and summoned the same white swords that Caleb had back in waterfall cavern, and when they launched upward five seconds later, I felt my strength grow exponentially. Manectric saw that, and growled. I responded by digging back down and burrowing towards the center of the group. I would take down the leaders, and hope that the rest would go away. Manectric could not tell where I was, unlike Luxray, but while I prepared to slam her with my dig and x-scissor combination, Luxray called "Look out!" and Manectric sprinted away. I settled for attacking two luxios that were in the area, and knocked them out. Let these two learn that if they dodged, their weaker teammates would take the hit. Would that make them less likely to dodge?

i looked at the adult pokemon. Luxray was staring at me. "You will regret that" he promised, and I saw icicles form, covering his teeth. I was surprised. If that hit me, I was done for in an instant. The luxray charged me really fast. I shot underground just in time, but that pokemon was getting **faster**. I barely got away from the snapping ice type attack, and saw Luxray gnash his teeth angrily through the top of the hole. Surfacing now would be a mistake, so I reverted to Strategy A: dig more pitfalls than I need.

The first electric types yipped in surprise as they found themselves dropping into pits. Luxray roared with anger, vibrating the ground. Why was his roar getting stronger? Manectric howled now too, probably boosting her strength. "If you value your friends" I heard Manectric snarl "you'll give up now".

She was threatening my team? Not acceptable. I burrowed underneath her silently, happily noticing that Luxray was too busy helping his little army out of the pits to notice. I quickly dropped Manectric into a pit, and collapsed the hole. I was not mean enough to make her suffocate; I gave her an air pocket, but her howls were mostly inaudible. I set to work, digging and slashing while she uselessly struggled to get free. Finally, **finally**, she was unconscious. I pulled her upward until we surfaced to keep her from suffocating. Luxray noticed me pull her out of the ground, and almost got me with ice fang again. underground again, I began to attack the luxray, realizing that pitfalls don't work on a pokemon that can see straight through stuff. I could not even touch the guy, because I had to be very careful in avoiding ice fang.

One last thing I had to do before I could deal with this guy: I had to take out the rest of them. He watched me burrow towards them before charging after me. Unable to get to me, he tried to collapse the tunnel with roar. he succeeded, but it did not hurt me. Despite Luxray's best efforts, I could whittle down his army until it was just me and him. He roared extremely loudly, and all my tunnels collapsed, and I was forced to get new ones. I could not get near this guy. How was I going to hurt him? Why did he keep getting stronger?

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM…**

Through the vibrations, I could tell that something had just smashed Luxray across the room and deep into the wall.

Bastiodon!

He stood up, wobbling a bit, and Luxray blasted through the wall with an electric attack. "Flash cannon" Luxray said distastefully "like that could harm me". That was correct: Steel type attacks don't do much to electric types. Luxray prepared an electric charge. I saw my chance. If Luxray tried to use ice fang while charging electricity, the ice would shatter and it would be a basic bite. I charged underground, setting my claws aglow, and dug upward. Luxray did not have time to look down. My combination attack sliced up his belly and blasted his chest. he flew straight up, and landed where I would have been had I not sidestepped. That swords dance granted me enough power to launch such a large, powerful pokemon in one hit. I was glad I managed to learn it. The whole army of electric types were down.

_I did that._

The weight of the events hit me now. I had not even flinched. I had calmly dealt with an entire two dozen pokemon mostly by myself. How had I done that? I felt more fear now, facing the fallen enemies. I shook that off. I needed to focus on my team. Some of them were trying to stand now, Servine struggling to get up, Machoke was staggering a bit, and Bastiodon was of course up. The rest were just laying there. It was a good thing that we had just scored a ridiculous amount of reviver seeds on top of everything else.

Two minutes later, everyone was up and well. There had been an incredibly awkward moment between Caleb, Sarah, and Mightyena because of the position they were knocked out in, and Servine was chewing on an oran berry. The rest of us heard the story from Bastiodon, who had basically watched the show knowing that if he attacked, his cover was blown. He had realized that I could not hurt Luxray without a distraction, and fired his flash cannon to cause the perfect distraction. The other eight pokemon stared at me as Bastiodon finished telling the story. "Uh…" was all most of them could say. Caleb was not at a loss for words however. "Job well done, Nincada" he praised me "I'm impressed". Caleb, impressed? not something that happened every day. "Thank you" I said.

Servine and Mightyena and Sarah congratulated me as well. Servine was a bit annoyed at her own failure "The first one down" she muttered, only too audible for us. "What's the deal today?"

"Shall we move on?" Mightyena asked

"No" I told them, and they turned towards me "Manectric told me that this cave was a dead end".

"Thanks for catching that" Caleb said "let's use our badges to get out of here".

"Wait…" Servine started.

"Couldn't we have just used those to get back to the guild?" Mightyena finished

"Oh…" Caleb said, and Sarah said nothing.

"Actually" I said "Wigglytuff has edited the badges of the teams temporarily to make finding you guys easier, so it now teleports people to the entrance of the dungeon they are in. We have to get back on our own, and then the guild will revert the badges back to normal.

Caleb sighed "well, that's a shame. I thought for a moment that we had found some form of loophole. Lets go" he activated his new silver badge, teleporting out of the room and into the bright sunlight.

"So then" Sarah said, shaking out the last yellow sparks from her white-pink fur. "Shall we continue?" Had Sarah recovered now? were we finally going to have a full lively conversation about whatever as a group of nine? Sarah still seemed a little sad, but perhaps the group could actually talk. Mightyena readjusted his pack, I jumped onto Sarah, and we moved away from the cave. "What should we call that cave?" the tangela asked together. "Well" Caleb started "it had electric types in it, and charged magnetic rocks in it. Let's call it Chargestone Cave".

"Fine with me" Mightyena said.

"Im not sure" Servine said "I think 'Thunder Cavern' sounds better".

"There wasn't any thunder" Caleb said.

We agreed that chargestone cave made more sense, and Servine reluctantly gave up. "All right…"

A storm was brewing in the distance. Lightning flashed across the massive cloud, particularly near the center of it. "That cloud is odd…" Servine said, looking at the thing "it's too centralized, and that lightning should not be blue".

Blue lightning? I looked again, and it appeared Servine was right. Among the flashes of yellow lightning, blue energy traveled from the edge of the clouds into the center. "We had better figure out what that is" Caleb said, and we picked up the pace. "If this thing is dangerous, we should do something about it" .

"What could we do about a storm?" Sarah asked, and Caleb looked at her "I don't know. I'm figuring it out as we go". he thought about it, and said "The way the energy is moving troubles me, and it looks unnatural. However, we may be able to redirect that flow if we disrupt the balance of the electricity. In other words, we need to add voltage to that thing".

"You want to **add** electricity to a cloud full of electricity" Mightyena summed up, making it sound as stupid as possible. It certainly sounded stupid. Besides… "Caleb, none of us know any electric moves whatsoever. At all".

Caleb blinked, and then his face became a look of self loathing and stupidity "Oh…" he said, embarrassed. We laughed at him, and then we went to investigate. As we went forwards, the cloud filled our vision of the sky. Lightning flashed constantly, and occasionally struck the ground. we saw some smoke, and hurried forward. A fire had started near the center of the storm. We had nothing but Sarah's water pulse to call a water move, and that just exploded. Servine did something I have not seen before. A tornado of leaves began swirling around her, and the twister kicked up a wind and when she hit the fire, it was blown out a bit, but grew back quick because Servine had just added a bunch of leaves to it. Servine made a noise of frustration.

"Servine" Caleb said "this is only a small amount of trees surrounded by dirt and some rocks. it won't spread far. Lets get the pokemon out of here!"

Servine nodded, and we spread out to get the pokemon out of there. seedot and lots of bug pokemon were evacuated quickly and efficiently. One weedle almost got hit by a tree, but my pitfall saved him. I made sure he was not hurt, and then she followed me out of there. By the time we were done, the entire grotto was aflame. I stayed underground while Sara tried to clear some of the fire with water pulse. We fought it in ways we could, Caleb, Sarah, Mightyena attacked the flames with different moves to cut off the oxygen to the flame, and the rest of us stayed away, unable to do anything.

Finally, the fire died away, most of the trees destroyed. We had done the best we could, but it had not been enough. "That storm is getting worse" Caleb informed us, causing us all to look at the sky. The lightning was constant, swirling around the center, and the center was-

"The center of that cloud is deepening in color" Servine noted, and we watched it seem to go pitch black. The lightning intensified. Suddenly, Caleb Jolted to attention as his eyes filled with surprise "**Get out of here!" **he yowled at the watching pokemon we had evacuated "**Now!**"

What was going on? "we need to go too!" Caleb said, panic entering his voice. "That thing-"

He was interrupted by an enormous **BOOM **from that storm as the lightning now focused into the center of that void in the center of that cloud, and the whole area around us to become electrified by some freaky energy, and suddenly we could not move fast. Before anything else happened, I checked on the pokemon we had saved. To my relief, we had gotten them out of the way, but electricity was coursing through everything, even me. It did not hurt, but it sure restricted our movement. This was no normal lightning. Caleb struggled towards the perimeter, but the energy increased. A light began building above us, and things began to float up. With a powerful flash, we felt ourselves get yanked into the sky and into the storm. My vision went dark.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I woke slowly. We were surrounded by black, but I could see my body fine. It was like there was an invisible light, and I could see myself perfectly. Next thing to notice: I was alone. No sign of Caleb, no sign of anybody. I got up and took a step forward, and where my paw touched the ground, a wave of red spread out from the surface and outlined a room. It was cubic, with an exit nearby. I could not see what was where without that, but I recognized the room type. It was a mystery dungeon. More freaky dungeons! Would they ever end?! I walked forward, and every step sent out a circle of red that resonated around the room and out the door. I walked forward into the corridor. Nothing made noise, not even my own footsteps. I was always light footed, but nobody could be absolutely silent without being a ghost type that floats around. Even Ghosts tend to make noise as they float. Everything was soundless. The red ripples outlined a square on the floor, which I was careful to avoid.

_I hope the others are okay._

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I watched the blue ripples of light spread across the floor. I was in a long corridor, and it appeared that the light traveled only so far. It faded away about one hundred yards from me. No noise was audible, and I wondered about how my ears were going to deal with it when we got back. Speaking was useless, and it reminded me of my time as a reflection. I shuddered at the thought. I was going to have a phobia of mirrors for a while. Perhaps it would pass.

_We get sucked up into a storm, and wind up in a mystery dungeon. If this keeps up, getting back to the guild will be tedious. _

I noticed a green ripple come by the hallway. Someone else? An enemy? I rushed forward. Maybe it was a teammate. Perhaps I could have some good luck here? I ran straight into a wall because I was moving faster than those ripples

_Note to self. Move slowly. _

I viewed the source of the green lights. they were just appearing out of nowhere, and they showed up in a walking pattern. A pokemon? I saw nothing at all. Calling out was useless, and I realized that I would have to walk forward to get any information about this thing. I walked forward, and the source of the green backtracked. I reached forward, hoping to snag something. I hoped that this was not an enemy. I was basically handing my face to them, saying 'please punch me now'. My teeth impacted something, and the taste I got made me feel incredibly embarrassed.

_Crap. Sorry._

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

I felt teeth close on my face and I thought I was being attacked. These blue ripples hid an enemy pokemon! I immediately slammed the thing with vines, and sent it crashing away from me. Whatever it was, it was still moving. It was backing away from me. I wasn't about to let this jerk just run off. I wanted answers. Problem was, my voice wasn't working. Yelling at this fool was not going to work, so I just wrapped it in vines, curling them around the pokemon until I could see it's outline and…

_An absol!? Who is- _

Oops… Sorry. judging by the initial action, it could not be Sarah. That meant that the only pokemon this could be was Caleb. Why did he bite me in the mouth? I get that he couldn't see me, but…

I suddenly blushed, glad that I was invisible to him. Where had that thought come from? Not acceptable for me. No. Why does Caleb make everything so difficult!?

He struggled where I was crushing him, and I let him go. I wrapped my vine around his neck and began to lead him down the hallway. He resisted at first, but eventually padded along behind. I was ready to get out of here, but we needed our teammates first.

_Let's go. Lets get the others._

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was not happy being treated like a dog by Servine. In fact, I was furious. I mean, yeah I was dog-like now, but come on. She literally had a leash on me!

_You tasted like spinach! _I wanted to yowl at her. Maybe I would later. I growled to myself as she pulled me along by my neck. Yes, I said growled. I have been doing that like it was second nature. New body, and I guess I technically have a different brain too. Perhaps I really did receive a few instincts. It took me only a bit to learn to walk properly, and growling came somewhat naturally. Come to think of it, I learned to swim faster than I imagined I would. Maybe I do have instincts.

The other thing that I noticed was how easily I could taste and smell things. I recognized the taste of spinach easily, and when I tried to smell something, I could smell it fine. Servine did not smell like anything, but vegetables would not smell so much anyways right? Why was I thinking of food?

_I guess I would still be omnivorous, and while I eat berries, the physical form I possess suggests that this species could have originally been carnivorous before sentience emerged among the species. _

But I guess there were still some carnivorous tendencies. Or were they herbivorous tendencies? Servine was a plant right?

_No! I will not consider eating anybody! NO THANK YOU!_

What was wrong with me? I was sane right? Everything is getting to my head. New world, new body, and now new mind. I had been slowing down, and Sevine pulled my leash impatiently, and I angrily thought _I will take you apart, salad girl. _She tugged again, and I bit through the invisible vine. She faltered, and I stamped my foot powerfully. She saw nothing but the resulting ripple, which was wider and slower, like the force of the impact changed the frequency. Servine began walking again, and I followed her. I would get out of here soon. I hoped.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

The white ripples spreading away from my footsteps were the only thing lighting my way, but it was easy to see because of it's color. There was a junction in the road, and I almost turned right, but a red ripple came around the left wall and echoed down the hall. No noise was audible, but I figured that it must be another person. No enemies were apparent. I was white somehow. Red would be Sarah right? Awsome. I moved around the corner and saw the source of the red ripples. Nothing was there. Was Sarah invisible? Was I invisible? Sarah stopped walking, and I moved forward. I felt the air heat up, and I realized that Sarah was about to cook me. I dived aside as the invisible flamethrower, slamming into the dark wall. I zipped around her, and tested if I could hear anything. Nothing was visible or audible, but my keen sense of smell picked up Sarah's scent. I could smell her fine, but she would not be able to smell me without trying too. I managed to figure out how to see her movements based on the ripples. She was turning. She turned towards me, and I stayed still. I jumped away from her and landed in the crossroads again, and she began to run towards me. I ran, hoping that Sarah would follow me.

She seemed to be. I just had to hope that she would keep doing it. We eventually arrived in the first room for a while, and it seemed to have many exits. Perhaps we could get lucky. I felt something slam into me. I was carried into the air and the attack detonated. Sarah had blasted me with water pulse!

I tried to roar with pain, but no noise came out. I slid into another corridor, and Sarah followed me. I ran again. I ran for a while, checking behind me to make certain that Sarah was still following me. I was paying too much attention to Sarah, and crashed into something. Two somethings. I registered green and blue, and then red as Sarah crashed into us all. We all tumbled together, and I was on top of someone. We scrambled away, and I think Caleb was going to attack, when we all felt vines wrap around us and stop us cold. Servine was stalling everything. It seems that Caleb and Servine had found each other, and were travelling through the dungeon. I smelled the group of them, and something else. Nincada? Where was he?

I smelled the air. Nincada was nearby Sarah, probably on her. It was like what Caleb told me about their joke on Sarah. So that was five of us. Once again, Machoke and the tangela were left out. Bastiodon was gone. Hopefully, they had found each other. Servine pulled at us, the vines around my neck. For some reason, it felt insulting that she was doing that. Nevertheless, We had to go. I think that we were settled down, and I think Sarah had calmed down. At least she was not blowing me up.

_And we're off._

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

So the one leading me by my neck was Servine. Caleb was the blue one obviously, The white one… MIghtyena? I hoped we would find Nincada and the others soon. We walked along, and eventually we saw a yellow ripple expanding across the corridor. We immediately were pulled towards it by Servine, and we began to race forward. What we found was not a teammate. An enormous sphere of electricity was hovering in the room, sending bolts into the wall. Where it struck, the wall became visible for an instant, the wall turning grey. Was this thing what created the storm in the first place? If it was, the best thing to do…

I generated a water pulse, growing it above normal. One explosion, one wasted lightning ball. All is good right? I let the sphere fly.

**Boom!**

The others stepped back, as the thing absorbed the ball. The explosion was it growing and detonating, the electricity blasting everything in the room. The darkness disappeared. I realized with a shock that I had heard the explosion. The electricity hurt a **ton**. I yowled with pain as I dropped to the floor. The dark grey floor. No light ripples appeared. Things were visible. Things were audible. We were flung away by a secondary explosion that piled us on top of one another. I was on my back. Mightyena was on top of me **again**. Caleb had crashed into a wall, with Servine landing near him. Mightyena was looking at me, and I felt so embarrassed. I rolled to my side and dumped him on the ground. his head slammed against the ground with a **thud**. He groaned as he stood up. Servine was already up and now laughing at us "You two just keep **happening** to land on top of each other".

Like we were trying to. I gave her my best glare. Caleb stood up. "That was very dangerous, Sarah" he scolded me "Let's be grateful we can see again, instead of being blinded totally".

"Maybe a human would have been blinded" I muttered. He looked at me "of course" he said "i forgot. Forgive me".

"Always" I said, giving him a wink "you know that".

He looked away. Servine looked at him "You struggled quite a bit when I was leading you around" she said "you knew what I was doing".

"That's because you had a freaking **leash **on me!" Caleb said "I feel so insulted!"

I guess that being led on a leash is insulting to humans. Servine was not about to let that go however. "We could have gone so much faster! And you could have found out which one I was with your claws!" What did she mean by that? "Touching something with my claws would not tell me what the invisible object was! I had no way of knowing?"

"You bit me!" Servine said. Wait, Caleb tried to grab Servine? I looked between them.

"Do you expect me to grab something I can't see anyhow else? I don't have hands Servine".

"You need to work on controlling your strength!" Servine yelled at Caleb "It still hurts! And you could have avoided biting me in the mouth!" Caleb looked at her, surprised and a little embarrassed. "In the mouth?"

"In the mouth!?" I demanded.

He looked from me to Servine, and I felt rage heat my body. "How could I know that?!" He asked, and Servine began yelling again "Just don't bite me!"

"Don't expect me to" Caleb growled "you tasted like spinach anyways". We all recoiled at that statement. "Spinach?" Mightyena asked.

"A vegetable commonly used in salads" Caleb said, and we all backed up a step "leafy plants that are edible. Quite good for humans healthwise actually. Not the best tasting however" he said.

Suddenly, none of us wanted to be anywhere near him. Servine backed into the wall. The argument was over. Caleb walked away. "I'll find the stairs" he said "you guys can follow me or we can spread out trying to find it". I followed him, and Mightyena reluctantly went with me. Servine backed out of the room the way we came. "Caleb" Mightyena said "of course Servine is scared. You equated her with **food**. That would scare anybody".

"I see" Caleb said "It's a bit different in my world. Here, anyone around us can be called sentient. In my world, most other creatures have no such capability for emotion and feeling. Most creatures other than humans are not capable of such things. Humanity is basically the only species on my planet that can be called sentient. Humans are omnivores, meaning they eat meat and plants. Thing is, that's just how things evolved in our world. Survival is key".

We stared at him in shock, but I realized that that was how you survived in that world. If other creatures there were dull, and act mostly on instinct, humans would be the only ones to group together the way so many pokemon do. "If that's the way your world works, fine" I said "We don't need to tell anybody about that. I'll go find Servine and explain it to her".

"Very well" Caleb responded "I shall not talk about that again". Mightyena looked at us "I will stay with Caleb for the moment" he said, and I nodded and rushed back to the room where Servine was before. "That was interesting…" I heard Nincada say from on top of me. I practically jumped out of my fur "Nincada!" I protested "don't do that!"

"Sorry" Nincada said.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

"I'm not going to eat anyone Mightyena" Caleb said. We had been walking around for a bit, that darkness gone. We could have been free to exit the dungeon, but we could not find the exit. I was very uncomfortable next to Caleb now after the little revelation about human life. He explained it, but… "yeah?" I asked carefully.

"Just pretend that conversation did not happen. This world is so different. I could not begin to think about eating anybody. Besides, my comment about spinach was based on a situation with lots of stress. I should not have spoken so rashly. I apologize" he said. I began to relax. Yes, his world was different, but Caleb understood that perfectly. Hopefully the others would relax eventually too, except for Sarah. I intended to help Caleb get home as easily as possible. If Sarah was uneasy around him, would that make it easier?

"I understand" I told Caleb. "I know you would not. There has been some stress on the rest of us too. These dungeons are freaky. Something we have never seen before"

"What's up with that by the way?" Caleb asked "Freaky dungeons happen to get freakier just as I show up? I mean, for the love of everything important wait a few weeks to a month to start messing up the planet. Why must I get trapped in this situation?"

"Perhaps you're arrival had something to do with it?" I asked, and he looked at me sharply "Maybe something about the new developments caused whatever distortion that brought you here?"

Caleb looked ahead down the corridor into another room. "Maybe" he muttered.

"You are absolutely right though" I said "you have awful luck".

"I have always had awful luck" Caleb said.

That was a bit pessimistic. Then again, he was a human turned absol in a situation he could not control surrounded by people who either don't want him to leave or were/are making things difficult for him. In my opinion, that pessimism was justified. That does not mean it was correct. "You cheer up" I ordered "you have vital clues to get home now. Don't waste it".

He nodded, a small smile forming at his mouth. Suddenly he whirled around, and I turned to see a spark traveling across the floor. Where it touched, the floor turned black again. "Curses" Caleb said "The change wasn't permanent".

More sparks showed up. Seeing them made the pressure in my body apparent to me again. Caleb was distracted, so I shook the dark energy from my fur. It connected with the ground. When it did, the lightning stopped immediately. Perhaps it was a reaction from that energy. Despite how useful it was then, I needed to get rid of the obvious threat to my health. The problem was, I had no idea **how **to get rid of it. We moved on.

I wanted to keep up the conversation "Your luck is pretty bad considering the abilities that absols typically have"

He looked at me "what?" he asked. "Absols can have one of two abilities. One is pressure, which clearly neither you or Sarah have. The other is called Super Luck. It makes attacks sometimes just redirect towards weak points on their own".

"Interesting" Caleb said "what exactly does pressure do?"

"Pressure makes pokemon in the area require more energy to use attacks, and the air gets dense around the pokemon with the ability. Sometimes while fighting a pokemon with pressure, you will just get exhausted".

"So all pokemon have some sort of ability?" Caleb asked me, startling me. Humans did not have abilities? "Yeah" I told him "my ability is called 'moxie', which makes me grow stronger whenever I beat a pokemon".

"Any time you beat someone?" Caleb asked "No wonder you took apart those armies in waterfall cave". I nodded. I had run so many down that I could have beaten any of them with a single claw at the end.

"I take it that it's not like using swords dance" Caleb said "apparently I can't use that more than three times"

I had no idea about that. An interesting situation, then. There was a limit to the strength that a pokemon could increase before hurting itself, but that limit was high. Moxie did not go past that, but a move to increase strength definitely could. I had never seen swords dance in action, but if it only took three, that meant that it could improve strength a lot. apparently the move took some time to pull off.

We were interrupted by my sense of smell and Caleb's sense. Caleb looked at me and whispered so that only I could hear it with my keen ears "Sarah" he said. I nodded and looked ahead. Caleb continued whispering, giving me more information that smells could not tell me "She's sneaking up on us with Servine and Nincada on her back. Probably hoping to catch us off guard. Why not surprise her instead?"

I nodded _sure_.

"when she pounces, step aside" he whispered. I smiled, and he whispered "three seconds".

one….

_What is she going to think about this?_

two…

_perhaps I could get her to laugh afterwards._

**Three!**

I sidestepped to the left, Caleb to the right. A red blur blew by us and tumbled a few yards on the stone. Servine and Nincada fell off and tumbled away. I moved forward and up to Sarah. "Let me help you up" I said, trying not to laugh. She looked at Caleb instead. Caleb walked right by the team and continued onward. Servine still looked apprehensive, but she and Nincada followed. Sarah rolled away from me and stood up quickly. A shame I could not get her to even smile. As she turned away, my smile turned into a frown. Nothing was working. Nothing at all.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

After about an hour, I could make myself look at Caleb again. So things worked differently in his world. So what? He was not about to eat anybody. We were pretty sure that we would find a staircase eventually. We found a room with a tree toppled in it, dirt attached to it's roots. It was a tree from the small forest near the storm, it's branches still blackened by the fire. occasionally, sparks traveled across the floor and turned spots of the floor black like it was before. It seemed to be accelerating.

"Ow!" Sarah cried as a spark shocked her in the paw and traveled up her leg to the joint. Her leg turned promptly invisible. It looked like she had lost a leg or something. Mightyena freaked out, making sure she was okay and the like while Caleb inspected the leg. The invisibility started to spread very slowly, going about a millimeter over the course of the discussion. Mightyena looked far more worried than Sarah did. "When we get out of here, hopefully it will stop" he said "come on!" He began to run, and we were forced to follow him. Mightyena ran faster than I had ever seen him run, and we zipped by room after room. Soon enough, we could hear the crackle of electricity as things started to reset. Soon, we would be in the same situation as before. We found ourselves in a room with a pit in it. The ground just turned into dark clouds at the center, and electricity was flashing around it. Either an exit, or a trap.

"This dungeon's version of a staircase?" Caleb asked "Or death trap?"

"Find out!" MIghtyena practically yelled. The invisibility had spread up Sarah's shoulder and up to her head, and her face was partially invisible. "Yeah" Caleb said "Let's go!"

We jumped into it. We fell for a while, only seeing lightning and swirling clouds, and then a prick of light appeared at the bottom. We fell out into… open air!

We all screamed as we saw land far below, we saw green brown, and a whole bunch of white…

We fell into a cloud. It supported us like no cloud ever would. The landing was very soft. Caleb slowly got up. Sarah was fully visible again. Finally, **finally**, we had made it out. There was yet another predicament however, as we were now on an unnatural cloud in the middle of nowhere. Considering our luck it would either drift away from the guild or break apart.

Finally, I noticed that the rest of the team was there, and before I could say anything, I was once again crushed in a tangela hug. "Ow" I complained.

_Another adventure awaits the unwilling subjects. A shame our luck is so bad… We will have to deal with it. As long as we can get to the guild, this crazy stuff should be over. I think I have deserved a week long sleep. The others have too. _

My eyes were closing now. Caleb wobbled in his position. We were so exhausted. I let myself drift to sleep, hoping we would not be in the middle of the ocean when we woke. I flopped onto the ground as the tangela released me.

_Good morning _I thought to the rising sun before I could no longer stay awake.

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**Hey, everybody! Thanks for reading this chapter. Please review my work, and remember to follow the story to get updates on chapters. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!**

**P.S: I am stunned that Jango is actually obeying me and not spoiling future events in the story. In fact, i'm surprised that Jango has not attacked me yet. I wonder what point of his timeline he's from... Anyways, i think there will be no spoilers from him in the future. I'm glad i can surprise you with events still. If he spoils anything, tell me OK? Thanks.**

**P.P.S: You can still send me ideas for teams and team members using the system below, just be aware that the pokemon in team Titanium and team Amber have already been selected. In fact, i would appreciate knowing who you want to see in what teams. Thank you.**

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Nickname:

Age:

Gender:

Species:

Personality:

Background (this may be lengthy):

Unique Aspect (optional):

Other:


	14. Chapter Fourteen: Land of CLouds

**Jango: Hey, guys! I'm back!**

**Just wanted to say, i think you guys will enjoy this chapter. Poor Caleb. Heh, i would like to see his face remembering this day. Anyways, just wanted to say hello. No real reason i'm here other than that, actually. Maybe i'll have something to talk about later. Hyperjade's ticked at me for messing up the TV set earlier (hey, it's hard to keep remotes intact if you're using claws), and I should probably not stick around for him to catch me. See ya!**

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Chapter 14: Land of Clouds

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I woke up from another day in wonderland, entertaining two kids and adventuring around a world I created myself. Those kids were so sad that I had to leave again. I was even more so. I knew I was leaving paradise to return to grim, annoying reality on top of an impossible cloud in the middle of the freaking **sky**. How were we to get down from here? What on earth (sorry, **cloud**) were we going to do about that? I checked over the edge once I was awake enough, and saw that we hovered above land still. Thing is, it looked different from the previous place. I had not seen this configuration of structures, mountains and plains on the map. Where were we?!

Servine woke up with a low "Uggghh…" and slowly opened her eyes. Sarah, I noticed, was awake and looking at me. Mightyena was still asleep. If my guesses about the effect of stress on a pokemon's body were correct, it's not so surprising that he was worn out. He had gotten so freaked out when Sarah got hurt. Bastiodon was weighing down the cloud, his size and weight pushing the cloud into a crater where he slept. I hoped he did not break through, because we had no way to save him. the tangela slept together, Machoke slept on his back, and Nincada was wide awake on Sarah's back.

Servine looked down off the edge "There are a few mountains nearby, but none high enough".

"Servine" I said "if you want to maintain your ability to remain calm, you won't look too hard at the ground".

She looked up "what?"

"Yeah, go ahead and pretend that nothing is down there" I told her "if you can't remain calm, things will go wrong quickly here. You'll go insane on this small cloud".

"Where are we?" Servine asked, worried now.

"Not where we are supposed to be" I told her "and before you freak out-".

Servine looked ever the edge again.

_Dang it! Listen to me!_

Servine's eyes widened, and I could practically see her go mad as she figured out what was up. I guess i'm very bad at keeping people from doing things. Maybe that's why I can't get Sarah to leave me alone. Speaking of Sarah, I felt her come up next to me and…

"What are you **doing**?!" I practically shrieked as Sarah **snuggled** against me. I leapt away, almost jumping right off the cloud, and backed away from the edge quick. Servine had started yelling obscenities in the background, but I had my fearful attention on Sarah. Mightyena had woken up, and so had the tangela. Bastiodon had his eyes open, but was barely moving. Sarah was looking at me. Mightyena caught my eye, and I looked at him like: _Help. Please. _

Sarah moved towards me, and I backed up a bit. Mightyena moved towards us. I had my back to the cloud's edge. She still moved forward, I had to do something quick

"No!" I yelled "You can't! You know you can't!" Sarah recoiled, giving Mightyena a chance to reach Sarah. I walked briskly past them towards the yelling Servine and the tangela who had joined her. "It's OK, Servine" the two tangela said as I approached them.

"No! It isn't!" Servine yelled "How do you think we could possibly get home from here?" I grew annoyed at that.

_Don't pretend that you're the one with the problem_

"You tell me" I said evenly behind her. Servine whipped around and swung a vine at the surprise. She hit my horn and the vine was severed. I peered disapprovingly down at her. "Oh!" Servine exclaimed "Sorry!"

"You are shouting at me" I informed her. "We arent home, but I already knew that. What you should be asking is 'where are we?' or more importantly, 'how do we get down from this cloud?'. Perhaps you could even ask 'who is in danger right now?'"

She looked at me, shocked out of her panic. I continued speaking. "I cannot answer the first question, nor can I answer the second. The third however, I can answer. Bastiodon will need help, because it looks as though he is weighing down the cloud. That cloud is, as you know, the only reason we are alive. We can handle being relocated to another continent. We **cannot **handle anyone freaking out. Got it? We help Bastiodon".

I walked over to Bastiodon, who was trying to stand. The cloud deepened where he put his foot down. "Try not to move too much" I told him "you might break through. it would be best if you avoided moving".

Bastiodon complied. I checked on the others. Machoke slept soundly, Mightyena was talking to Sarah, and Servine was staring at me, practically shell shocked by the scathing speech I had given her. Hopefully she would avoid freaking out right now.

"All we can do is wait" I announced to the group. Mightyena broke his conversation with Sarah to nod to me. Servine did nothing, just blinked. She looked tired.

I went to the spot where I was resting and laid back down. I would have to wait for a while. perhaps a long while. It looks like I have done exactly as much as I could have done trapped on a cloud in the sky. I would just observe the group for awhile, once again feeling like a parent observing their children. I was the one that needed to leave, and yet I was the one responsible for the group. Was that an issue?

One way or another, I would find out.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I panicked when Caleb almost jumped to his death. He was so eager to get away from me that he almost killed himself in the process. He noticed and backed away from the edge, but he was acting like he was surrounded by enemies. Perhaps in his mind, he was. I wanted him to see that he could stay. If he gave up, would he loosen up? If so, i would do everything in my power to make that happen. The chances of him getting home are low, and if he does, would everyone there not have moved on? I don't understand the human world at all, but Caleb seems like the typical serious type to me.

_Listen to me, labelling Caleb as typical. Caleb is far more than some absol. Far more. _

Caleb was now laying on the ground again, watching the group like some supervisor. Perhaps that was what he was. Not to me. Mightyena was babbling on, trying to make conversation. Jerk.

_Leave me alone! I don't care!_

Caleb stuck this lovestruck fool on me, hoping to distract me. Maybe Mightyena was a better pokemon now, but that's just unacceptable. The poor dog was clearly a believer in love at first sight. Then again, so was I. Caleb just could not be ignored with his strength, leadership skills, and attitude. He was terrible at hiding himself and at making himself appear unimportant. He was perfect for me.

"Sarah?" MIghtyena pressed. I guess i made things worse when i gave in and slept near him. My decision then was not made properly. I glared at the fool and moved away, but the cloud was small. I peered over the edge and tried to judge what direction we were moving. It appeared that we were moving towards…

"Uh… Everyone? You guys might want to see this" I said, prompting the group to join me in looking towards our apparent destination.

_The ocean_

The sea stood there, vast, devoid of land, devoid of places to escape to, devoid of basically anything we needed.

"Servine…" Caleb warned as Servine prepared to launch into a new rage of obscenities. She calmed herself. "We have plenty of food" Caleb said to Servine "at least for a while". "Servine nodded, and then asked: "What can we do?"

"About as much as we could do fifteen minutes ago". This from Mightyena as he walked up to the edge to join us "I think all we can do is wait"

Servine was not happy about that, but at least we were moving. If we hit land again, things should go better **If** we can find a way down. Caleb looked towards the coastline we were about to cross, and sighed "if we can go fast enough to reach the next continent overnight, perhaps we can find another tomorrow. Maybe this one will have friendly flying pokemon to help us".

I stared across the ocean and a white speck was visible. Another cloud? Perhaps this one will be bigger. Perhaps this one will be going the other direction. I stared at it. I could make out a spire surrounded by a flat line of clouds. "Check that out" i said, and the others turned to look. "Ah" Servine said.

"A cumulonimbus?" Caleb said, causing the rest of us to stare at him in exactly the way we had when he has said 'magnetism' "Uh…" we all said almost at once.

"Largest type of cloud, typically known for harboring thunderstorms and rainstorms, and associated with atmospheric instability, and cause plenty of severe weather such as tornadoes" Caleb said, causing our eyes to glaze over immediately. Satisfied with his explanation, Caleb moved back to the center of our small cloud. "Are you saying we should avoid running into it?" Bastiodon asked from his spot on the cloud where he had stayed"

"First off, hope that there is no lightning in there" Caleb said "Second, we have no reason to believe that that cloud is as impossible as this one is". We looked at him in confusion "impossible?" MIghtyena asked. "Nothing like this happens in your world?"

It was Caleb's turn to stare at the rest of us "you can't walk on a cloud. That's not a possibility. It should not be a possibility even here. We should have fallen straight through the cloud and fallen to our untimely demises. We should have gone two dimensional against the unforgiving mountains. By all rights, not a single one of us should have lived that fall.

_Wow, that was sudden. _

None of us except me tried to talk to Caleb after that. When i tried, he avoided me. I persisted, and trapped him by the corner. He peered over the edge, as if he was taking his chances, as if he was thinking _Sarah... ocean... Sarah… ocean…_

I forced him to talk to me "You don't get to avoid me this time" i told him. he glared at me, but it was totally fake. Caleb's true demeanor was showing up in the apprehensive actions he was making. He did not want to hurt me, but was willing to so he could get home.

"Yeah?" he said, putting fake hostility into his voice. I smiled, and his expression crumbled. I had figured out his game, and he knew it would not work. He had a ways to go to get rid of me. "Yeah" i said "I'm going to talk to you, and you are going to deal with it"

A real scowl appeared on his face as he realized his defeat. I smiled in turn. "Come on, Caleb" i said "talk to me like you used to when i met you"

He sighed "good thing i did not talk often then…" he said "fine. It seems to me that you have no interest in Mightyena". He was turning the topic to Mightyena? I did not like that game. "I want nothing to do with him" i said flatly. He seemed to expect that "why not?" he asked "Mightyena has been nice, courteous, willing, what reason have you for not giving him a chance?"

"Why should i?" i asked "i have you"

"You should give him a chance because i will not give you one" he said. Those words struck me straight in the heart, and i staggered back. Caleb continued "There is no chance that i will be with you, because i am going home. I **will** go home eventually".

"What happened to talking like we used to?" i pleaded, hoping to change the subject. "Come on, give me something". Caleb stared at me "If i give you anything" he said "all i will achieve is giving you naive hope. I don't want to do that".

He does everything to protect me. My heart soared. My smile widened, and i said "You don't have to protect me. Please-"

"Sarah" Caleb interrupted, and i focused on his impressive red eyes "after all this time you never understood my reasons for trying to leave so quickly. You haven't a clue about what drives me, despite the fact that i explained it to you. I am the only one who can restore the pain my family experienced upon my departure, because i am the only member of my family that knows where i am. That means that the only way i can help them is by returning home on my own. At this point, it does not have to be on my own. The only person who is impeding my progress is **you**, Sarah. Do not expect me to follow your ideals for the future"

Of all that, one thing really stood out to me. "Help them?" i asked "you arent concerned with helping yourself?"

"If all that was on my mind was myself, i would have given up long ago" he told me. My mind raced as i considered that. His family's happiness mattered more to him than his own, and that is why he could never give up. to reduce or eliminate the pain they must be feeling, he would do whatever he could to achieve that. That was why i could not reason with him. That was why he could not make himself stay. I have seen in his eyes that he likes it here, despite the craziness going on, and i know that he would stay if he knew that his family was OK, or that they had moved on.

The problem was, i could not reasonably assure Caleb that his family was OK. I could not tell him that his family had moved on. I wanted to do these things, and perhaps they were true, but there was no way i could do that to him, even if he believed me. He would be destroyed by the concept that his family had just accepted his disappearance. "Caleb, can you at least talk to me like you would a friend?" i pleaded

"You know why i cannot" Caleb said "I will explain anyways. You get your hopes up too easily. If i allow you to believe there is a chance, you will use all your power to stop me from leaving. That is why i cannot civilly speak with you".

Unfortunately, that made perfect sense. Fortunately, based on the current situation, i had plenty of time to change his mind. On the subject of our current situation, we seemed to be headed directly towards the large 'cumulonimbus', apparently a harborer of thunderstorms and tornadoes and other disasters that would wipe us out without even fighting. Fun times. When i looked back, Caleb was gone. I panicked for a second before i heard him chatting with Mightyena. Giving advice? Asking for help? I wanted to join him, but the tangela twins of all people blocked me. "He will give nothing but resistance" they said. Did they know what Caleb was, or did they simply understand the current issue? I did not know.

I ignored the two of them and walked by, heading for Caleb. This time, Servine blocked me "leave him alone" she instructed. when i tried to walk by her too, she stopped me with vines. wrapping them around my back and stomach and stopping me in my tracks. My growl is higher pitched than any other absol, and when i try to sound dangerous, it sounds like i want to play. Sometimes i hate my differences even more than the other absol in crystal community. i settled for releasing a little bit of fire from my mouth, enough for Servine to feel the temperature rise. Servine tightened her grip, and i realized that she would not let me do this at this time

"Instead of torturing Caleb further, you should be focusing at the situation at hand" Servine scolded me "you have no idea how selfish you are being, do you?" Rage ignited the firepower in my body. The truth of that anger was that i knew **exactly **how selfish i was being. I just didn't care. I did not care at all. Prompted by her words, i saw that we approached the giant cloud land. Within minutes, we would hit it. Caleb broke away from Mightyena and looked at the place. Bastiodon looked as much as he could.

"We are speeding up" Mightyena noted. Caleb said "Impact in T-minus one minute"

"Huh?" most of us said

"Skip it" Caleb said, and we prepared ourselves. We sped up more, like the cloud was pulling us in. Mightyena reached that conclusion too, and figured something else out as well "I think this thing has been pulling us away the whole time!"

Caleb made a sound of realization, and Servine looked very unhappy. We almost fell off the cloud as it sped up a lot "Three…" Caleb said

"Two…" Servine said

"One…" I said

We slammed into the surface of the cloud. Every one of us flew off unceremoniously, even Bastiodon. Caleb hit the cloud face first and slid on his face comically for about a meter. Bastiodon slammed down, and the rest of the group, including me, rolled against the cloud surface. Good thing that it was cloud, and somewhat amorphous. we drove through the ground and slid to a stop. "I must stop landing on my face" Caleb muttered.

"I thought absol always landed on their feet?" Servine said.

"I guess not" Caleb said "I'm feeling quite thirsty however. Oh wait!". At that, he bent his head to the ground and took a bite out of the cloud itself!

"What are you doing?" i asked. "Clouds are made of water" Caleb said in a _duh_ tone of voice "It's clearly made of water, but it resists like food. I expect this could fill my stomach and quench my thirst at the same time"

"Or make you sick" Mightyena said.

"Nonsense" Caleb said "It's water".

"So now we're trapped on a large cloud instead of a small one" i said "How is that useful?"

"This cloud is deep" Caleb said "Bastiodon should be able to move"

Hearing that, Bastiodon stood slowly. The cloud bent under him, but they held. He walked forward to the others. Machoke still looked a bit sleepy. The tangela looked at each of the group in turn. Servine looked incloud towards the spire or clouds i the distance. "We should get to that first" she announced, causing the rest of us to look at the tower of swirling clouds. Caleb grew uneasy. "That looks like a slow moving, upside down tornado to me" he said "it's even spinning"

He was right, the cloud tower was spinning. It spun like a massive, unwelcoming vortex. Servine wanted to go **near **that thing?

I looked at Caleb,, surprised to see him and Mightyena nodding. Were they crazy? Were we seriously about to go towards that thing? The two of them joined Servine, walking across the fields of cloud towards a clearly dangerous destination. What was wrong with them?

_I guess i'm crazy too…_

I followed them into the distance

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

I had pushed Sarah too hard, and now she was trying to get Caleb again. I had watched as she cornered him on the cloud and said nothing at all. Caleb had a long chat with her which i heard every word of. It's not like i can ignore something the way others can. I was glad that Caleb had shot her down, but now it seemed there was no way Sarah would ever appreciate me.

We walked now along the cloud layer, and when i had gotten thirsty i tried a bite of the stuff. Like Caleb said, it was hydrating and filling. I tasted no poison or other harmful materials. It seemed we were good on food and drink for as long as we were stuck here. I lagged behind the group, shaking dark sparks out of my fur once or twice. I honestly lost count of how many times i had to do that now. Every day, i needed to do it more often. Perhaps it would never stop. It seemed to be increasing in potency, and regenerating faster and faster. It seemed particularly fast at regenerating when i was having negative emotions.

_That stupid 'Crystal Star'. Why does that thing still exist!"_

I felt the dark power increase immediately. It must be fuelled by negative emotions. Furthermore, it seemed that i was more prone to negative emotions now. This was getting serious, but when i tried to tell Sarah about it, i found i could not bring myself to tell anybody about my condition. Why? Why does that matter to me?

_Perhaps this energy is malevolent, alive… deadly. _

I was scaring myself now. There is no way a form of energy could be evil. It was just **energy** for crying out loud. Why was i terrifying myself so?

"This walk is a bit lengthy…" i ventured to Sarah, who ignored me. Why was i trying so hard anymore? it was fruitless.

_Ow. Stop thinking negative, me. _

Caleb looked at me sympathetically. What use was sympathy to me?

_Agh… I think perhaps this energy really is making me angry…_

Was i going to go crazy because of this dark power? I could not say anything about it, and i can't even tell Caleb my misgivings about the crystal. Caleb depended on that crystal sword, not using his moves much unless he was using quick attack. Crystal star, as Caleb called the thing, was bright blue, as it always was when he was calm and collected. Blue was safe, red meant a warning, black meant evil fury.

"We are approaching the tower" Servine announced. Se we were. In fact, when we looked forward, the thing filled our vision. It was huge, spiraling, and basically a giant pillar. It had a few small clouds circling it in broken rings. The top could barely be seen. No details could be found of the peak because of it's distance. A dark speck was visible at the very base of the tower.

"Guys" i said "is that a doorway?"

Caleb looked ahead and groaned "It's a dungeon isn't it? It's a freaking **dungeon**".

"We don't know that yet" Servine said "don't panic". Like she was one to talk, screaming her head off when she discovered that we had switched continents overnight. My ears still rang with the noise. It's a shame my hearing is so good that something like that can hurt me. That was the only reason i had fallen unconscious when Luxray appeared after all. The memory made me recall the ringing in my ears then. It was not so pleasant.

As we got closer, it certainly looked like a doorway. In fact, it was an incredibly fancy archway made of solidified clouds and was about as majestic as gateways come. The top was arched, with cloud structures on it that looked like a smeargle's interpretation of wind, flowing from the center down the arch and outwards. at the base, solid clouds formed in the shape of billowing clouds at the base of the feet of the arch. The doorway was stationary, but the swirling clouds of the tower bent above and around the doorway. the whole area had normal, average clouds around the entrance. the kind you can walk through.

The group took it in, and Caleb said "a thousand to one this is a dungeon".

Servine nodded, and then said "but we have no way down. Perhaps, if we are **extremely** lucky, we could find a way down in here. All in favor of going in?"

We all conceded except for Caleb. I think he was a bit traumatised from his experiences in some of the dungeons. Being human, he would not have known what a mystery dungeon was at all. His particular worry must be from the mirror maze. I would be a bit traumatized if **I **was stuck as somebody's reflection. Apparently, Caleb could only move the way Sarah moved, and was absolutely stuck. His fear of dungeon trickery would not go away easily after such an experience.

He reluctantly followed us into the tower.

_This may not be a good idea…_

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

We walked into the place, and the clouds immediately became more resistant, like an actual floor. The door disappeared. It really was a dungeon, after all. I saw no enemies for now, but this corridor was also devoid of anything useful as well. We needed to get moving, and so we began to walk. "If any of these cloud tunnels are circular, i'm out of here in a heartbeat" Caleb said, and we all recalled his story about having to go through the spinning mirror tunnel.

_No wonder he's a bit traumatized from that dungeon. I would not want to go through that stuff. The rest of us had an easy time of that floor. Poor Caleb._

"You aren't going anywhere" Sarah said, drawing close to him again. Caleb tried to draw away, but the corridor was small, and he was against the wall. It got to the point where he sidestepped into the wall, and pierced the clouds with his horn. In his haste to move ahead, he was yanked around, getting pivoted on his horn. His backside and tail smacked into Sarah's side. Sarah smiled at him, and he looked more embarrassed than he ever had before. I understand that absol require a **lot **of embarrassment to blush, but his face went from black to a somewhat dark blue.

Caleb was still for a moment before leaping away at incredibly fast speeds thanks to quick attack, almost harming Sarah in the process with his sword. Sarah was unscathed, but she still appeared crestfallen. Mightyena tried to comfort her, but was stopped at the sight of fire coming out of her mouth as she saw him coming. She trudged ahead, and once she was out of earshot i whispered to mightyena "perhaps you should sneak up on her the way she does Caleb?"

"With Caleb, Sarah won't get hurt. If i'm not careful, i'll be a crispy critter" he informed me. Unfortunately, he was correct. "How can we help Caleb?" i asked him.

He looked away down the hall. "I don't know…" he said, and walked forward. Bastiodon and Machoke looked at me steadily, and followed. The tangela stayed right behind me as usual. I began to move down the hall again.

All was quiet, no enemies were inbound. I went ahead of the group again. It would be swell if we could get out of here without seeing any enemies, but usually the more floors there were, the more enemies were in each floor. This tower was beyond tall. It should not be long.

It wasn't. Two pokemon appeared around a corner. A shuppet and a masquerain. Our team of nine prepared for battle. Caleb acted first. Unsheathing his massive blade, he lunged into the fight. Unfortunately for him, while the masquerain was blasted away, the blade passed cleanly through the ghostly shuppet. Caleb turned at the wrong time to see the shuppet's eyes glowing bright blue. He was compelled to look, like any pokemon would in the face of your typical confuse ray.

_Uh oh…_

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was forced to stare at the floating thing's eyes. I literally could not look away. It held me there. How was it doing that? It's eyes glowed, and they were **growing**.

_What is going on here?_

It looked like the eyes were coming straight off the pokemon's body, and other things were shifting. Changing. The environment became a hodgepodge of the different dungeons i have been in. Stone, dirt, **mirrors**, and i recognised what was happening.

_I'm about to be confused!_

I thought that i could fight it if i knew what was happening. It was a mental problem, right?

I could not have been more wrong. I could **feel **my sanity begin to slip away, replaced with feral thoughts and the will to fight. I felt myself revert to a primal form that if i was still sane, i would have considered to be what my species must have been like long ago, before their sentience would have evolved. I felt my ability to judge vanish too. In a few seconds, i would be nothing but a vicious aggressor, and there was nothing i could do about it.

My vision went red

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

To everyone's surprise, Including the shuppet's i'll bet, the first thing the feral absol attacked was the ghostly enemy. His sword red, he slashed right through the ghost, and it rippled away, defeated. Our sense of relief faded as he turned slowly towards us, eyes filled with nothing but feral power. We were about to get attacked!

"Caleb!" Sarah said, and to my horror, Caleb zeroed in on her. Growling dangerously, he hefted the red blade and charged.

I have seen many instances of confusion in my life. The tangela seem to be linked, and both became confused at the same time. Thing about confusion, they lose all sense of direction, and while they were more aggressive, they attacked the walls and floor as much as other pokemon. Even I have been confused a couple times. It sucks. i had no idea what i was doing, and i woke up practically buried in rubble from a broken wall.

Caleb was different.

Caleb was not attacking the walls, or running about like an idiot. He only attacked the pokemon around him. Maybe it had something to do with him being human, but right now he was a vicious aggressor intent on taking us down. Wonderful. Not to mention that his sword was now red, the color of anger. That sword had freaky powers apparently, considering how when it was red, it could hurt ghosts. When it changed color, Mightyena recoiled like he was terrified. Mightyena must have had a bad experience with that thing before his little change of heart.

That was as far as i got before Caleb made it to Sarah. I went to stop him with vines. As the vines reached out to stop him, he **flipped**. he jumped and spun in the air, a technique that Caleb did not know how to do. His blade swirled around as he spun, severing the vines, putting Sarah into the wall, and almost crashing into me. I leapt to the left, barely avoiding the painful impact. Why was Caleb better at fighting while confused?

Sarah was unwilling to fight Caleb, Mightyena was terrified of that sword. This meant i was the one to have to fight him. At least the other team members weren't so afraid, but they did not look too happy about beating the crap out of the major leader of the adventure. I got all this in a single glance, which was good because i only had two seconds before the feral Caleb launched himself at Sarah again. Mightyena seemed to recover just as Caleb brought his blade down on Sarah's neck.

**CHANG!**

Mightyena had taken the blow. He was flung away while Sarah looked on in astonishment.

_Perhaps Mightyena has a better chance now. Caleb is attacking Sarah, and Mightyena defends her. _

Something told me however, that Mightyena was fighting a lost cause with Sarah. Sarah was stubborn, and loved Caleb whether he was ignoring her or attacking her. Poor Caleb. Poor Mightyena.

**SMASH!**

I had not been paying attention, and the impact of his red blade flung me into a room at the end of this hall. Worst of all, there were two enemies in there. the steel bug fortress, and a floating rock-like pokemon shaped like a crescent moon. lunatone. I watched them as the team backed into the room, chased down by Caleb. Three enemies in one room. Problem was, one of them was our friend. The confusion should have worn off by now, but he was still messed up. He charged. Machoke called out "Switch!" and ran around me, leaving me to stop the rampaging absol. while he and Bastiodon combated the pokemon behind me, i finally got my vines around Caleb and lifted him up. He yowled and thrashed, but i had him tight. Extending my vines, i encased him mostly. I would just have to wait for him to calm down.

Sarah looked worriedly and Caleb, and Nincada grabbed a heal seed from the pack and tried to feed it to him. Nincada got it in his mouth, but Caleb spit it out. I have never seen a confused pokemon spit out food either. Normally, if something landed in their mouths, they swallowed instantly. Mightyena had joined Bastiodon in wiping out the moon pokemon, and my tangela teammates were trying to force feed Caleb the heal seed with Nincada's help. Sarah was doing nothing but looking worriedly at her beloved.

As for me, i was having extreme difficulty keeping this thrashing human from breaking free. I had to keep my vines away from his claws or head to avoid them being severed. I could regrow them easily, but the moment i was forced to release him, he would take apart a lot of us. His confusion should have died out by now.

_Did Sarah or Nincada not say that Caleb seemed to be weak to status effects? sleep powder affected him a lot, right?_

Caleb had superior strength to me, and despite my best efforts, his thrashings stretched the vines and he was still dangerous. I would just have to carry the guy. I heard a few thumps and turned to see the pokemon fall defeated. Machoke looked beat up. "What happened?" i demanded. "The lunatone used a psychic attack" Machoke grunted, clearly in pain. Machoke moved for their team bag and removed an oran berry. "What will we do with Caleb?" Bastiodon intoned.

"We hold him until he wakes up" I said. Mightyena looked at the sword on the ground, dropped by Caleb. Sarah was going to pick it up. He looked worried "Maybe we should just break that thing" he said. Sarah looked at him "No!" she said "Caleb loves this thing!"

"It's dangerous" Mightyena insisted "it can't be controlled".

"We aren't breaking it" Sarah said with strength in her words.

"Seriously" Mightyena said "We don't even have to tell him we did it. We can just say a freak attack took it out while he was confused. It would only take a moment".

"No" Sarah said forcefully.

Both had a point. That sword was dangerous, but Sarah was also correct that Caleb was attached to it. Mightyena seemed particularly anxious about it, and i wondered what happened to him. I asked what happened to him.

"Why are you so scared of that thing?" i asked.

"It's because-" Mightyena began, but as he was about to speak his next word, no sound came out. He winced and shook his head "Blast…"

"That settles it" Sarah said, not realizing what had just happened "This thing sticks around".

I, however, looked at Mightyena with worry. Nincada and Mightyena's team looked very worried, too.

_Something just physically stopped Mightyena from answering that question!_

That was not good. Perhaps Crystal Star should be destroyed? We could not do it right now, but i was going to keep an eye on Mightyena. If anything seemed wrong with his health, i would talk to him. Right now, we were sitting ducks for the next attack. "We must keep moving" i said, putting authority into my voice "let's go".

_Get better, Mightyena._

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

We moved on. I was fuming a bit, literally and figuratively. Some smoke escaped my mouth when i again thought about how Mightyena had suggested breaking Caleb's treasure, like it was no big deal. Jerk. He did not even have an explanation for his actions. I guess he was willing to hurt Caleb a bit, the way he was willing to hurt anybody before he managed to make us all believe that he had transformed into some good pokemon. A clever ruse. I snarled to myself quietly, but Mightyena has the ears of, well, a mightyena. he glanced at me, and i glared back.

_Why is his expression so sad? Drop the act!_

I held the weapon in my mouth, and that was the reason why i held back the flame before. An accident would not be welcomed by the team. The weapon had turned green when i had picked it up, much to the surprise of the others. What does green mean?

We walked into a room, getting ambushed **again **by those stupid lunatone and other pokemon. This room had stairs, but said stairs were blocked completely by pesky shuppet, fortress, and masquerain. This time, Mightyena walked straight into battle. I really mean he **walked **into it. Casually firing shadow balls from his mouth, he walked on towards the stairs. His shadow balls were different from the normal, crackling with unstable ghostly energy that did not characterize Mightyena's attack normally. Mightyena seemed angry now. He stalked straight towards the stairs.

When he began to walk up the stairs, we would be yanked into the new floor. I hoped that this thing was not too big. Now, our adventure in this cloud tower really began. I just hoped that Mightyena would chill out. That new anger worried me.

_Let's go _I thought, and the last thing i heard before we warped was Caleb's roar of anger.

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**So that was fun, right? I know that this chapter was really to build on the next one, but hey, these chapter's are required in any story. Please review my work, tell me what i can do to improve, ETC. If you wish to receive email notifications on chapter updates, feel free to follow the story. If you have any Character ideas for the future, please send them to my personal email. Thank you all, and have a nice day!**

**-Hyperjade**

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Nickname:

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	15. Chapter Fifteen: Sky High

**Jango: 'Sup guys! Jango here. **

**So this should be interesting. Personally, this is one of my favorite chapters so far. Really, I think that they should not have-**

**But I've said enough! I really don't want to retell that story about... I cant even say it without wincing. Whatever. Read on, readers! I think you guys will enjoy this as much as i did. Have fun!**

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Chapter 15: Sky High

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

By the time we reached the third floor, we were cursing existence as a whole. The first thing? It took us an hour to get past the second floor. Second, Sarah and her impressive abilities were rendered useless by the fact that she would not let go of Caleb's sword, convinced that Someone else would break it. Mightyena would not touch it anyhow. I was useless, and there was no way I was touching the floor. We were literally surrounded by water. I probably could dig through the stuff, but it was made of **water**. Three, Feral Caleb started to speak, and was driving us insane. More on that later. Our life for the hour went something like this:

**Earlier today...**

"Gah…" Servine said as she almost lost her grip on Caleb when attacked by a lunatone. Caleb almost got away with the opportunity to escape, but Servine was fast, and observant. The vines re-lashed Caleb before anything bad could happen. The lunatone was blasted away by Mightyena's new brutal shadow ball.

"Ah, you're fine" Mightyena said, surprising everyone with how he reverted back to being nasty. He was having problems speaking earlier, and he seemed to be breaking down. I worried that he would revert the the being he was before We got to him. Something was clearly wrong with his health now, considering his pained, angry expression. He did not seem to like how we kept such a close eye on him.

Machoke stayed away from the enemies, being basically useless against the flying and psychic types in the dungeon. We were in fact going up, and I suspected we would meet more flying types upstairs. I shuddered at the thought.

Bastiodon was a huge help, just blowing things away, when he saw them. Problem was, he was always looking in the wrong direction, and by the time he turned around, the battle was half over. Part of our issue with speed was the fact that Bastiodon weighed down the clouds, and moving was difficult for him. All in all, the only ones who could realistically attack was Mightyena, and the tangela. The tangela were quite useful, but their type could only take them so far.

All in all, this was a bad dungeon for us. We just could not do too much against them. We trudged from room after room slowly, finding no stairs, and almost no items. Being rich from our treasure hunt meant that nothing we found was of too much value anymore. It was a shame that even reviver seeds received no gasps of relief or awe. We just pocketed them. Speaking of that, pocketing things was difficult with our team leader thrashing for freedom and filling our ears with constant yelling and roaring. At one point, Servine spoke up about the topic. "Perhaps we could squeeze his neck a bit. Shut him up".

She was only half joking, but Sarah took it seriously. "You will not hurt Caleb" she said through the blade in her teeth. Why was that thing glowing a warm green when she held it then? It was not the darker green of grass, and it's not the lime green of bug. It was in between them, and translucent. A pinpoint of white light shone in the center of the blade. It was odd how that happened. Mightyena avoided it like a flame, as if he was being repelled by it.

Caleb thrashed constantly, and eventually, we tried to put him to sleep. We watched him spit out the seed immediately, and he focused on Servine, who had thrown it. To all of our shock, he **spoke**.

"**Useless!**" He spat, his voice freaky and distorted. His eyes now looked like a darker red.

Needless to say, we all freaked out about that. Caleb began struggling again.

"No confused pokemon has talked before!" Servine said. I thought about it. Confusion tended to last only a few minutes. If it lasted longer, was this the result? They start talking and acting like they start to understand things again? "Don't let him free" I warned Servine, who nodded.

Caleb's roars grew louder, and words occasionally flowed through like: "**Fall!" or "I will rip you apart!" **Real happy stuff. Caleb seemed to have gone completely insane. I hoped that we could fix him up or something. We continued to struggle along, finding absolutely nothing but enemies. One lunatone who was blasted by Mightyena flew towards Caleb, who grabbed it using his mouth and shook it back and forth. The poor thing was already unconscious. Lucky stiff. After Feral Caleb was done with the poor thing, he tossed it away, where it was buried into the wall. He growled at it, and said "**pitiful thing…**"

We shuddered at the sound of his freaky distorted voice and tried to put him out of our minds as we trudged on. Caleb was not intending on making it easy for us. "**Release me!**" he yowled at us repeatedly. Mightyena wanted to do it just to shut him up, but I managed to convince him that Caleb would just attack us. Mightyena seemed to have trouble with reason right now.

Occasionally, Mightyena and Caleb would growl at each other if Caleb made some comment on something. This Caleb was an arrogant prick. Caleb was supposed to be calm, collected, kind. Caleb after getting hit with confuse ray was talking more and was just a horrible person in general. We needed to fix Caleb immediately, but there was no way to do that if we could not get something down his throat. Sarah would not let us knock him out.

"One attack, one reviver seed, problem solved" Mightyena said. Servine nodded this time as well. It seemed a good idea to me at the moment too. "No" Sarah said "We won't hurt him".

That was final, and so we had to deal with it. I'm certain that Caleb would beg to be saved, and will probably be so incredibly embarrassed about his actions after this is all over. I needed to save the guy, and I took a giant risk. When Sarah was forced near Mightyena, I jumped over. He almost bit me, but he managed to stop. Sarah had not even noticed. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"We need to put Caleb into the line of fire. Make it look like an accident. Get Servine to do it. We cover for her".

"Makes sense" he said "i'll talk to her".

Mightyena seemed to recover a bit when I talked to him. Maybe that was the issue. Maybe he was being ignored, and hated it. He made such an effort. I stayed on him until Sarah got close enough. When I jumped on her, she looked back and almost whacked me away with the blade. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing" I lied "Carry on".

She bought it. I was surprised at her apparent inability to sense stuff. She had the danger sense, but she did not use it. Also, she was so trusting compared to an absol's normal issue with trust. As a result, she did not see trickery coming. A shame for later, a blessing for now.

Now, the team had a reason to not moan and groan about the situation. When we finally came upon enemies, it was a shuppet and a masquerain again. The masquerain sent water flying at mightyena, who jumped away from it. Mightyena had placed himself so that the attack would sail straight into caleb. it was actually a rather pathetic water gun. Even I could have stood my ground against it. Caleb's face got a good soaking, but he was pretty much fine.

Caleb probably would have shot a look at Mightyena like: _really, dude? _This Caleb was different.

"**Watch it, asshole!**" Caleb yowled at Mightyena. Things were about to go wrong. Of all pokemon to stop the confrontation, it was the shuppet attacking using a fluctuating shadow ball. It seemed like every pokemon's shadow ball looked different. Anyhow, Caleb had drawn attention to himself, and took it in the face. I hoped that we could use a reviver seed then, but Caleb appeared to be in acceptable health. That was unacceptable.

"**Ghost type**" Caleb snarled "**Useless!**"

"You seem to enjoy that word…" MIghtyena said. I was seeing a proper rivalry erupt between Mightyena and the feral, angry version of Caleb. I hoped Mightyena realized that Caleb probably would not remember this entire thing.

"**I do enjoy it, actually**" Caleb said, surprising everyone. He actually answered the question? "Are you… progressing?" I asked. It seemed a silly question. Thing is, this was apparently a new phenomenon where a confused pokemon remained confused and started to think normally again, but with a different personality. This Caleb seemed to be Caleb, but angry, aggravated, and overall Not somebody you would want to hang around with, but he was still a person, as far as I could tell.

"**What do you mean, bug?**" Caleb asked, insulting me. Scratch my earlier analysis of character, this Caleb was just mean. I did not answer his question. It was entirely possible that this Caleb knew what I meant, and was just aggravating me. I heard battle sounds in the background as Mightyena and Bastiodon had their share of battle for the moment. The enemies were no longer a problem. Caleb was a problem. One that needed to be solved.

"Forget it…" I muttered, and we decided to move on. Caleb was an utter nuisance the rest of the floor. Between the painful experiences of the dungeon itself, and listening to Caleb switching from struggling to being chatty. Seriously, I think that this guy said more things on that floor than he ever has. Only the ever delusional Sarah seemed to be okay with it. She did not seem to understand the situation. Caleb could do no wrong in her eyes.

After another twenty minutes of trying to get Caleb knocked out and failing miserably, we found the staircase. In the **last room**. When we ascended the stairs, Caleb had not been cured to our dismay. Confusion and other ailments were supposed to be extinguished by the change in floors in a dungeon. Caleb just was not going to make this easy for us.

**NOW…**

So that's why we struggle so much. Caleb had re-entered his chatty stage, spewing out facts about the different **wars** that the human race took part in. It was horrible to hear about all that.

Caleb told us every detail. Sarah would not let us shut him up. Finally, to ice the cake, Caleb would not even remember the situation at all. Caleb was not to blame here.

Caleb was talking now about the significance of something called the 'American Revolution', and proceeded to give us casualty numbers. At that point, Servine's vines extended a bit and wrapped around his head, trying to clamp his mouth shut. She had difficulty, but she managed. "Thank you **so **much!" Mightyena exclaimed "I was going deaf next to him!"

Mightyena seemed to have recovered. We had taken eyes off of him for a bit, and he seemed to recover immediately. I wondered what had kept him in such a bad mood. He still brutally blasted away enemies, and his moxie ability made his shadow balls blow up faster and more dangerously each time he fired. He was now carrying us through the floor.

"**Mrrrff…**" Caleb got out from his trap. He was going to be annoying to hold, because Servine was basically incapacitated while she held him there. It would take Servine more energy to use the vines if the vines were longer. She looked tired already, and it was the **second floor**. I was grateful that Servine was using the extra energy to keep Caleb mostly silent, however, because the way his voice was different was freaking me out.

Sarah went for a pokemon sneaking up on us, and I used X-scissor on the shuppet when it floated too high. Sarah was untrained with the blade, and her strick just blasted the floor into lots of floating clouds. It seemed I weakened the ghost enough, however, because when it tried to shadow ball me, it lost focus and blew itself up. It faded away like all ghost pokemon do when they are defeated.

"Well done" Mightyena told me.

Good thing **he **was acting as he was supposed to… Personally, I wondered if the entire group was going insane. I certainly would go mad if this continued for too long.

We continued for another half hour, our fights practically casual at this point. Not to mention brutal. Caleb just would not shut up unless Servine held his mouth shut, and even then he was growling and pulling at the vines. Even Sarah was frowning now, realizing that Caleb was not about to get better. A blessed staircase appeared in a room.

Nothing was between us. A straight shot.

Except for the two dozen pokemon that dropped from the ceiling the instant we began to walk towards it. Shuppets. Masquerains. Every single one of the pokemon charged either a shadow ball or a water pulse.

We ran. There was no fighting these enemies. We ran like nothing else was important anymore. Where we had been standing was completely obliterated, and we saw blue sky underneath. Terrifying. Luckily, our first stroke of luck yet, ghosts tend to not be so fast. As we bolted up the stairs, I hoped that the next floor would be easier.

Nobody could have been more wrong than me. The next few floors were more of the same, and almost an hour each. We made it, but we ate a dozen oran berries apiece, and plenty of the heal seeds and even a reviver seed were used. Machoke got hit by a psychic attack, and dropped. But now, I need to talk about floor five.

Floor five **sucked**.

Machoke almost fell into open air, Bastiodon accidentally activated a rain orb by stepping on it. Oh yeah, and our captive got loose and basically made life five times harder for each and every one of us.

Servine tired out eventually. She simply ran out of energy, and she collapsed. Caleb dropped to the floor, and to everyone's horror, the vines retracted automatically. Feral Caleb was utterly free, and about to wreck us. He had no weapon, but he was an absol, and incredibly dangerous. Mightyena formed a shadow ball. Servine was too wiped out to fight. Sarah looked like she wanted to stop Mightyena, but even she realized the danger we were in. None of the ghost or psychics could amount to this.

Mightyena fired. I prepared to jump, my claws glowing with bug type energy. The idea was to get Caleb to dodge and then he would be unable to change directions.

Caleb did not do as expected. He raised one paw, and his claws began to shimmer with ghostly energy and elongate. I had no idea what he was doing, but the shadow ball struck the claw and was dissipated and then absorbed by his ghostly claw. The power dissipated, seemingly sucked back into Caleb's body. He had somehow just stolen the shadow ball energy into his own body. I had no idea that was possible. Mightyena looked flabbergasted. "**Heh…**" he said. We prepared for him to attack.

"**You eight have done a terrible job here**" Caleb said, and just… walked away. He grabbed his weapon, yanking it out of Sarah's mouth painfully. He slung it back on his back. "**Are you going to stand there looking like fools?**" he taunted "**Get on your feet and follow me. I hope you aren't as useless as you look**".

"Caleb, are you… recovering?" Sarah asked hopefully. Caleb looked at her with contempt. "**What are you talking about?**" he asked "**What makes you think I need to recover?**"

"You aren't yourself!" Sarah exclaimed "We need Caleb back!"

"**I am Caleb!**" he shouted, whirling on her "**What exactly makes me so different** **from your 'Caleb'?**" Sarah was taken aback. "Everything!" she cried "You have been so mean, so-".

"**Don't waste my time**" Caleb growled "**I am the same person. A simple confuse ray, and some impulse changes. A distorted voice, and you foolish, useless children assume I am someone completely different**".

So wait. Now we were the ones offending him?

"You don't understand" Sarah said "Caleb is defined by his calm, quiet, calculating aura and leadership. You have so far been defined by anger, impatience, and a distorted, evil sounding voice. We need you back to normal".

"**Good luck with that**" Caleb said, laughing without humor "**I don't intend on leaving for a bit**". Sarah grew displeased. "How long?" she demanded "I need Caleb!"

"**NO**" Caleb said forcefully "**You do not. You need someone who will stay. Caleb is not that person**".

"But-".

"**Enough. Your voice irritates me to no end. I shall change the subject**".

And then he started talking about strategies of war again. He did not attack us, but he was itching to. It seemed that he had some control over himself after all. Perhaps that control caused a stalemate between Caleb and the confusion, and resulted in this guy. We tuned him out. Servine rested now, carried by the Tangela, who had no trouble supporting her.

Despite Caleb was the one saying he was irritated by **our **blather, Caleb was no better. I was confident we could heal the guy, but not right now. And now, we had no real reason to take him out. Perhaps we would get lucky. Occasionally, Caleb walked in a way so that someone else could accidentally stab themselves on his sword.

One thing that made it a little easier was Caleb's new love for battle. Seriously, I think he goes completely primal when fighting. His voice becomes evident in his taunts, and we all shudder when he speaks. He eyes are now the color of blood. Typically, eye color can change if the pokemon is being controlled by a hypnosis or something, becoming cloudy or lighter. It was true, in a sense, that Caleb was being controlled, but this was a horrible, warmongering version of him, brought about by confusion.

We watched him carry us through the dungeon, and he seemed to have better luck than we did. The stairs were located at the ten minute mark. The sixth floor lasted all of fifteen seconds, and would have been shorter if we had not all been surprised by being dropped straight onto the staircase. It did not feel so good, because it felt like the placement distorted space to keep us from appearing inside the staircase. It was painful, and hitting the solid stair edges was not pleasant for most. Either way, we carried on.

Shuppets got replaced by duskulls. Duskulls had different ways of fighting. They used astonish instead of shadow ball. Servine got badly scared by one to the point of curling up and shivering. The power of astonish was like this: create an aura that forces pokemon to be more easily scared, and then scare them bad enough to incapacitate them by appearing behind them. Forcing fear into others was messy business, and it affected some more than others. For servine, the attack was devastating. Caleb seemed willing to let the duskull torment her, but mightyena put the duskull in its place. After helping Servine up, Mightyena glared at Caleb, who had started talking again. Caleb was oblivious.

So we continued. Feral Caleb proved to be an avid fighter. We got through so much more without Servine and Caleb unavailable. Even so, being led by an egomaniacal jerk with no self control is not the most wonderful idea.

Nevertheless, he was a good fighter. Whenever a pesky masquerain got too close to hit with the blade, he raised a claw, using that intense ghost energy to carve them up and knock them out. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. It looked like a shadow claw, but absol apparently don't learn that naturally, according to Servine. Furthermore, the attack had better reach and was more volatile than the normal shadow claw. It was a shame Caleb would not likely remember how to use it.

A few floors later, we needed to use the max elixirs to boost our stamina and allow us to keep fighting. We had lots, but I guess we thought it would be easier. I was prepared to fight again after drinking the elixir. The next duskull to show up got a painful 'x' in the face.

After dropping another dozen enemies in the cramped space of the dungeon, we came to another room. Guess what we found there, I will wait.

…

Did you guess that we found treasure? That we found a dungeon Kecleon Mart? That we discovered the stairs for the floor?

Wrong. Wrong. **Wrong**.

Did you guess that we hit another monster house? The receptionist at the back has your prize.

**Roaaaaarrr!**

The horde of pokemon called out in their feral languages at once. It was almost deafening. All sorts of things should have gone wrong. Before the horde could really attack however, three pokemon lunged into battle.

The rest of us watched as Caleb, Mightyena, and Servine blasted apart the room in the fight. Mightyena's shadow balls, powered by every KO he has achieved in this dungeon, blasted craters in the floor and ceiling. Caleb's red sword left behind a red afterimage as he quickly batted pokemon away, growling at each one of them, insulting their strength. Finally, Servine had recovered enough to be a huge asset in the battle. She was the only one who had gotten hit.

"Mightyena, please blast a hole in the wall" Servine said. Mightyena immediately said "done" and plowed through the wall with shadow ball. Open air appeared in front of them, alongside a near sunset. I wondered at the point of that action, but Servine had one more trick left. She straightened, and her body glowed with the same light as the setting sun. When the glow faded, she looked absolutely fine. No injuries at all. I have never seen anything like it. "What was that?" Sarah asked.

"Synthesis" Servine said "A rare ability of grass type pokemon. The move allows me to heal myself based on how much sunlight is on me. People don't see it much because it is difficult to master. You could end up exhausting yourself instead with the effort. Even I am not perfect with the move. If I had done it incorrectly, I would be almost unconscious.

Why would Servine attempt a risky move? it was safe now. Perhaps she was practicing in case she really needed it later. I would not press her. Caleb, however, scowled and said "**risky or not, you avoided using such a useful technique in situations when you needed energy. Containing me when I was in my full primal confusion. Foolish girl, I could have killed you**".

It appeared Caleb was concerned about Servine's health and pretending not to be. Caleb certainly was recovering over time. We were seven floors up now, but there was no telling when Caleb would begin to recover. The way that things were progressing, it was almost as if this Caleb was an entirely different person. Because of that, it was more likely that the change would be more sudden. In other words, it was possible that he would suddenly collapse and become regular Caleb again. Hopefully.

_What if this Caleb doesn't want to disappear? He seems to be improving. I feel bad now, because it feels as though I am wishing for the death of somebody. _

Caleb was distracted from his fighting of enemy pokemon by Sarah, who had decided to speak up. "Caleb, I wonder… Do you think you could…"

She paused, trying to come up with a word. I felt sick. Sarah was about to try and convince Caleb to stay around when he was incapacitated. Feral Caleb would not say yes, and would likely chastise her immediately. That would not happen, because now I was annoyed. "Sarah" I said as sternly as I could physically handle (my voice is squeaky, so that is difficult) "Don't you dare try that". Caleb confirmed the fact that he would say no. "**The bug is right**" Caleb said "**You have no decency at all if you believe that you can try that with me. No wonder Caleb does his best to avoid you**".

That was a bit more than I thought necessary. Sarah looked like she had been struck by lightning. Honestly, I thought she was going to cry. Mightyena was the one to comfort her.

"You don't have to be so harsh" he told Caleb. He then checked on Sarah. "Are you alright?" he asked her "It's all right, Sarah, you can talk to me". Sarah was looking at Caleb's unforgiving glare, but now focused on Mightyena's reassuring gaze. Mightyena seemed to have recovered in the face on the one he loved. I tuned out their conversation. I was exhausted just listening to these antics.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

I looked as Sarah, wondering if she would finally talk to me. She was looking back, and her eyes showed vulnerability. Caleb had just **hurt **her. I shoved the incoming growl back down my throat. She spoke now, and my heart lightened. The pressure in my body dissipated. She had said "Thank you…"

She had said it reluctantly, but this was really the first time she really meant what she said to me. It felt good. I smiled. "You're welcome" I said warmly "anything you want or need, I can help you". I meant it. I could do anything to make her happy. Furthermore, whenever I talked to her, the pressure in my body all but vanished. My love for Sarah had the opposite effect on my condition that anger had.

"Sure…" she said reluctantly. She then walked away. She looked back. At me. When she turned around for good, I allowed my smile to grow. Servine was the one to notice. She gave me a smile like 'congratulations!'. I was not exactly successful yet, but this was the biggest step yet. My smile began to fade as I understood that things would not go perfectly on their own. I would have to work on it. She was about to turn the corner. We hurried to catch up. Caleb stayed in the back. The stairs were found in a room. For once, it was unguarded.

Floor eight had new tricks. There were now holes in the floor, open sky visible below them. I was unsure of how that worked, us having just left a floor below it. Dungeon trickery made each floor free floating. We could see open sky whether we blasted the roof or floor. If we blasted the right wall, we saw empty air. We could see the continent below. Thankfully, it was not a third different continent. I waited for something bad to happen, but thanks to my ever increasing power, and Caleb's fighting skills, we pulled through. Sarah was helping now, too. Her flamethrower seemed weaker than normal, but that was likely because powerful emotions like love and hate fuelled fire type moves. All she exhibited now was sadness. Water pulse was devastating against lunatone.

Another lunatone was blasted away. Another masquerain was wiped out. We reflected on recent situations. Whenever somebody got tired, a max elixir was used.

Floors floated by now. We had arrived at floor 12. Somewhere around floor ten, ledians had shown up, causing a problem because of their attacks against us three dark types. Flamethrower took care of them quick anyhow. Sarah's tail moved back and forth, as all absol's do when walking because it was a rigid blade. With Sarah, it seemed cuter than other absol can manage. Perhaps it was the red.

Solrocks replaced lunatones this floor. They were annoying because instead of psychic moves, they launched a flamethrower at our poor plant-like companions. Sarah saved them by jumping in front of them, preparing the azure glow of protect. Afterwards, Sarah and I blasted the thing away from the group altogether. I smiled at her, she looked away.

_I'm treating her like she treats Caleb. She is treating me like Caleb treats her. _

The way those two were getting along, I needed to change tactics. Slow and steady wins the race. Unless, of course, it was an actual race. Then, you haul tail and rise to the top.

_Perhaps I could just help her as much as I can. That might work. _

I almost crashed into Sarah in my thoughts as she stopped in a room. It had piles of useful berries all over the floor.

It also had almost no floor. It was a maze of clouds that created an actual maze to get to the other side. It was ridiculous, but there were the stairs, in the furthest corner. We had to walk along it and not fall off. Bastiodon made a noise of frustration. He would have difficulty. We heard commotion behind us, and knew we could leave nobody behind. The floating and flying pokemon appeared around the corner. **twenty **of them. New pokemon were there as well. Altarias. The dragon types led the pack. I watched, knowing that we needed to go. **now**. Bastiodon turned around instead. Machoke backed up in the face of the flying and dragon types. I wanted to tell Bastiodon to turn around. Bastiodon had used flash cannon too many times too-

**BOOOOM!**

The entire corridor was set aglow with the white-silver of flash cannon. Where did Bastiodon find the energy to use that? He was tired. The peril of having enough energy to blast a flash cannon is getting pushed back into the hallway and pushing us almost off the edge. Bastiodon was pushed back far enough to knock us aside, and sliding straight towards a hole in the ground. Servine and the tangela wrapped him in vines, but Bastiodon almost pulled them down with him. Every single one of us grabbed him as he teetered over the edge. Caleb did nothing. "Help us!" I roared at him.

"**why would I do that?**" Caleb said.

"CALEB!" Sarah shrieked, about to fall. His eyes turned to her, cold eyes focusing on her face. She was so afraid. We all were. We were about to fall out of the sky and down to the sea below. "Help her!" I yowled at Caleb, not caring about relationships at this point. We were all about to die. I saw Caleb's eyes go from blood red to something in between that and the normal color. Caleb was winning. He rushed forward, and grabbed us as we were about to fall. His voice swapped between distorted and normal, like he was fighting it with all his might. "**Gr**a**hh**hh" Caleb said "**T**oo… **He**a**v**y…"

"Come on!" Servine said, pulling as hard as she can. We called to each other, trying to get everyone pumped, but even with Caleb we were slipping. Caleb spoke now, and his voice was fully distorted again. "**PULL!**"

His voice roared through the group, and I realized, as the others clearly did, that death was not an option. Despite the sudden feeling that we were being reinvigorated by a feral, confused prick, We pulled with all our might. Bastiodon got his back legs on the cloud. Finally, every one of us tumbled to a halt on the clouds. We had made it. "Thanks…" I wheezed in Caleb's direction. He stood up. One eye was blood red, the other was a regular red. It seemed that Caleb was still confused however. "**Whatever**" Caleb growled.

Sarah went to go to him when she could stand, but was frozen by Caleb's glare. The glare that said _Don't waste my time_.

Sarah walked away, down the narrow twisted bridge and walked over to the stairs. I did not follow her. Instead, I comforted Bastiodon, who was slightly traumatized by the scenario. We fed him a max elixir and several oran berries. When we finished, we suddenly warped as Sarah walked up the stairs on her own, placing us in a room without any pits thankfully. We collapsed upon the ground. Caleb guarded the door and ordered us to sleep. He did it like Caleb would if he was **really **angry.

We complied immediately, collapsing onto the ground at once. Most of us slept immediately, but I was awake for a while. I thought about the run so far. This was the thirteenth floor of who knows how many. I thought about how Caleb had almost recovered, but the confusion had won out. What would it take for Caleb to recover?

My eyes closed on their own. I had not realized how tired I was. I tried not to sleep, because my boosted power from my moxie ability would disappear if I slept. Nothing I did to stay awake worked. I fell asleep.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I woke up first. My eyes opened slowly, and saw Caleb guarding the entrance. His eyes still looked blood red. I had enough of trying to reason with him. Caleb on his own was tough enough, and a loner. Caleb confused was straight up an unmoving wall of flawed reasoning. Did Caleb really think all would be well if he just made it home? He was gone for a month and a week. I did not have the heart to tell him that. It would crush him. What if that was the only way I could make him stay, if I just told him…

_No, No I can't tell him that going home won't be so easy. Caleb would hate me forever if he gave up because of that. If he were to discover the difficulty he would have even if he made it back home, he would have to do it on his own. _

I tried to go back to sleep. There was no point in being awake. No matter how I tried, Caleb's image appeared in my mind. My thoughts were racing too fast. When I opened my eyes again, Caleb stood exactly where he was. His muscles clearly visible underneath the fur. His expression strong and unyielding. Everything about him made me want to stay as close as possible to him. He even smelled great to me. Even harder to resist was the was the way he was calm, polite, and nice. He only harsh when it really mattered. Or, of course, when he is confused. Why does it have to be that I fell in love with the guy that was always affected by something that made him less friendly. He was already stoic and unyielding to begin with. He was also human. Maybe it was that quality that made me fall in love so quickly. That could have been why. Caleb would likely have some sort of complicated explanation, but after I figured out that Caleb was human, it made me feel something even more than before to know how unique he was.

Caleb would likely have some sort of complicated human-psychology explanation that would make no sense to any of us. His crypticism was also endearing. Why was I so in love with the guy? Do I care?

_No. I don't care. I know what love is, and I feel it for him. _

I really did love the guy. I did not know why. I did not know why it was so immediate. I also did not care. Whenever I was near him, I could feel his warmth. I could feel it especially when I had rubbed up against him on that cloud. He was warmer than most absol. I was too, but that is because of my unique abilities and form. The frequent use of flamethrower helped.

Caleb noticed me staring at him, and his face contorted into a scowl. I hated seeing a scowl on his face. It made him look like an entirely different person. He looked mean, nasty, and just… not Caleb. The confused absol looked down the hall again. Occasionally, he would lunge away, and an attack could be heard down the hall. Caleb would then return.

After an hour of just watching Caleb, and listening to the others sleeping, Caleb seemed to begin to tire. His stance was a bit slumped, and he was panting. I decided to get up and check on him. "You okay?" I asked Caleb. He growled at me, not even turning around. "You're tired. Let me guard this entrance for a while".

He made another growl and said "**f**i**n**e…" His voice was going back to normal now, it seemed, though it was fluctuating like there was some mental battle going on in his head. He walked over to the far end of the room, as far as possible from me and the others, and laid down onto the clouds. His eyes closed immediately. I hoped that he was going to be fine when he awoke. I had to focus now. I looked down the hall, and waited.

One thing about being on guard duty is that guard duty is freaking **boring**. Burn this, water pulse that, engage in brutal battle with altarias. Blast away pathetic solrocks and ghost pokemon. Get beat up by a surprise ledian that snuck up behind a koffing. The koffing almost pushed me back with poison gas, but seemed surprised when I forced it back with a gust of wind and poisoned the rest of the enemies lining up to attack me. In its surprise, it was unprepared for a flamethrower. It seemed I had another line of defence with that cloud of poison lingering in the corridor. On the other hand, it would be annoying to try and get back past it. Being able to control the wind also was a bit taxing, to be honest. I'm not using it the way I should have been doing, but I don't really need the attack yet. Besides, the collateral damage would be an issue.

so another hour passed, and most of the others were still asleep. The creepy tangela twins had woken up at the same time and were now standing guard with me. Their attacks did not do much to the enemies here, but they had some impressive attacks like a green version of my water pulse, apparently called energy ball. The attacks did not do much to the bug types and the flying types whatsoever, but they were strong enough to take down a solrock. I let them take care of those things.

After another twenty minutes, Servine and Machoke came around. I was surprised at seeing Machoke up, considering the beating he had suffered in earlier floors. If he was still hurt, he should not be pretending to be fine. He saw me looking worried, and straightened in his standing position. He pretended to be ready for combat, but he would be in trouble if we let him fight. Servine noticed the issue, too, and ordered Machoke to go back to sleep. He objected, speaking for the first time in a while. Machoke tended to speak less than Caleb did, and so also tended to go unnoticed. When he did speak, it was like _oh, hey, thats right. You exist. _

It was horrible, but he just seemed to fade into the background. I bet Caleb would love to be able to do that. He was not fading into anything with me around, though. Caleb was not about to vanish like he had never existed like he intended to.

Caleb woke up. His eyes seemed lighter for an instant, but they quickly turned blood red again. Darn it all. Servine cursed next to me and then said "he fell asleep and you did not feed him a heal seed?"

Wow, that was not smart of me. Of course I could have healed him as soon as he fell asleep. I felt incredibly stupid. "Sorry…" I muttered. I was too busy fantasizing about Caleb that I did not actually get out a heal seed and freaking **heal Caleb**. My shoulders sagged.

_Crap._

"Don't tell Caleb about that" I told Servine. She looked at me strangely, and if she said something, I bet it would have been 'you think he would care?' Caleb would probably be happy that he evil self told me off at this point. I was done being sad about that anger he showed me. It was not exactly Caleb, anyways. Right?

It was Caleb's body, anyways, and I had no way to talk to my Caleb until this confusion wore off. My Caleb was more likely to talk to me at least than this jerk, and I had a chance to bring Caleb back, but I did not. I failed to do it. I know it's difficult to feed a sleeping person things, but I could have managed it. He joined the group reluctantly, seeing the cloud of poison gas in the hallway, and frowned.

After I received an according tongue lashing about blocking our only exit with **poison**, He waited with us for team rush to wake up. After about ten minutes, Bastiodon got up slowly. Mightyena still slept. In fact, Mightyena would not wake up. He had spent a lot of energy, and that moxie ability probably kept him standing. Going to sleep would let the abilities boost fade away. So he slept. Caleb almost went to wake him, but Bastiodon got in the way. When Caleb tried to walk around the living wall, Servine wrapped him in vines again. When he angrily slashed through the vines, Machoke stepped in front of him.

While they had a stand off, I realized that if Machoke could knock Caleb out now, Caleb should recover. Caleb tried jumping, but Machoke had an advantage. Caleb found his back leg grabbed as he jumped over Machoke. After that, Machoke just put him back on the ground. No smashing like we had expected. Caleb growled, but Machoke finally was in his element. Caleb could not take down a fighting type with only normal and a ghost type move. Crystal Star was not going to help Caleb here. I almost stopped it, but now I realized that all I wanted was for Caleb to get better.

More tense seconds passed. We all braced for a fight to break out. Caleb's horn began to glow white. Machoke's arm became surrounded by swirling white energy. There would be no contest between scratch and karate chop. They prepared to attack, when a voice surprised us all. "That's enough!"

Mightyena stood out of sight behind Bastiodon. He walked into view, not fully awake, but awake enough to glare at Caleb and Machoke. Caleb returned the glare, then walked back to the entrance. His meaning was clear: What on earth do you want to do about this cloud?

I was a bit too tired to make another wind, because I was not supposed to use my attack like that. I was tired anyways, but we could not just sit around long enough for me to take a nap. We were ready for combat otherwise. While that poison cloud kept things out, it kept us in. Worse, the cloud was dispersing slowly, still toxic, but nearing the room entrance. It seemed we needed to wait until it dispersed enough to be breathable without really bad poisoning. So we waited.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

We did not have to wait long before something spectacular happened. Sarah was tired, and Mightyena still seemed sleepy. We expected an entire horde of enemies to appear as soon as the poisonous cloud was passable. Turns out we did not have to wait that long. Instead of dealing with a ridiculous horde of enemies, We started to hear explosions **above us**. We braced for something to take us down. The explosions were massive, and coming closer, like something was blasting through each floor of the dungeon. We knew it was too powerful for us. Mightyena decided to speak up "You think the tower is collapsing?"

Perhaps it was. Collapsing might not be the accurate term, considering the explosions. Blowing up might be a better term. When it seemed that We would explode, the noise stopped. We prepared to violently blow up and maybe die. It would be a lie to say we were not terrified. A giant, yellow laser blasted through the ceiling and through the floor. Unlike the floors above, we did not explode. Why were we spared?

The very fabric of the mystery dungeon was torn and we could see the land below. We could see a few rips in the air, multicolored dimensional stuff that nobody could explain that must be a part of a dungeon's makeup. We looked down at the earth below, and then up at the sky. There was still fire. Way above, we saw the base of a platform. Perhaps that was where the attack came from.

Clouds began reforming as the tower apparently began to reconstruct itself. It was pretty quick, but something large, serpentine and green whizzed past us with a mighty roar. The roar itself would have made that luxray pale. We were thrust into the wall and not the corridor, thankfully. After we thought the danger was past, the thing roared by again, so close this time that a vacuum was created. We were thrusted into the pit and thrown upward, carried by the air. We flew into open air.

The unidentified flying object spiraled and twisted through the air in such a way that it carried the air with it. Him doing so, it was an impressive slipstream that carried us to the top of the surviving platform. When we reached the very wide, very flat circular platform of clouds. We found ourselves getting slammed into the ground at high speeds. I assume that even though I could not see the others because my face was plowing through solid cloud, The others were experiencing the same scenario. We rolled to a stop, and tried to stand. We were about to get attacked, and we were just staggering around being useless.

That is, all but Caleb. The confused, feral human/pokemon got up and charged the green **thing** that had appeared at the edge of the cloud. I blinked. What was that?!

The monstrous dragon was serpentine, green with freaky yellow designs on it. It was roaring at Caleb, flinging Caleb away to the far end of the cloud platform, which was thankfully collecting clouds and getting short walls now. The dragon began to speak "**HOW DARE YOU TRESPASS ON MY TERRITORY!**" It said. We were apparently in a place that we were not supposed to be.

It continued speaking "**I CANNOT ALLOW ANY OTHERS TO TRESPASS ON MY TOWER ANY LONGER!**" it roared "**YOU WILL FALL… THEN, MY TOWER WILL BE UTTERED WITH THE SAME BREATH AS THE HIDDEN LAND!**"

That did not sound good. It looked like we were going down the hard way. It would have been better to keep fighting our way to the top probably. The dragon shot forward , creating a vacuum where he was again. This time, were were just tossed a bit, but the one who suffered damage was Caleb. The dragon's intense attack smashed Caleb backward all the way over to where Sarah was trying to stand. She saw him, completely beat up but somehow still awake. While he struggled to get to his feet, Sarah seemed to… snap.

I don't know how else to describe it. Her face went from her normal innocent, foolish, and yet stubborn expression to a hard, adamant expression that said: How dare you…

Caleb tried to stand, but was hit by a green tail that appeared out of nowhere to smash him away. He did not get up after that.

_One problem solved… Caleb's back after this. _

We did not have time to deal with that. I spoke up "who exactly are you?" That was probably not the best decision I have ever made, but I hoped the all powerful dragon would be arrogant enough to talk a bit. "**I AM RAYQUAZA!**" the dragon yelled "**I AM THE GUARDIAN OF SKY TOWER AND SKY STAIRWAY. I LIVE HERE, WHERE NONE SHOULD EVER FIND THEMSELVES. I HAVE BEEN INTERRUPTED BY TOO MANY TO ALLOW THIS ANY LONGER!**"

It clicked. Three years ago, a massive meteor had apparently almost hit one of the continents that had no guild. Team Amber rose to fame after finding their way to a dungeon called Sky Tower, and called on Rayquaza to destroy the meteor. After that, this dungeon became a known one, and many teams dreamed of exploring the famed sky tower. This was Rayquaza after dealing with many unwanted guests, and being a dragon lord of the sky, he would probably get annoyed by unwelcome guests. Chances are he blasted away everyone who had made it to the top, and now he has had enough. He did not even have the patience this time to yell at us a bit or even wait for us to get to the top. He just blasted apart the entire place and grabbed us.

_Good thing for him this thing repairs itself. _

One thing Rayquaza had not counted on was Sarah going a bit crazy right then and there. She had had enough as well, and seeing Caleb brutally thrown about and taken down was too much for her. She growled as low as she could, and took a battle stance.

_Don't. You can't hurt him._

I feared for Sarah now. She was about to attack, and I could not stop her. There must have been a flying type move in those attacks Rayquaza pulled earlier. My energy was gone. I could barely stand. How had the dragon type done so much damage to me without me feeling it?

Sarah shocked us all now. Her fur whipped in the wind, but there was no wind.

How wrong I was about that when the clouds around Sarah erupted and swirled around her, and the path of the wind was visible. A sphere of incredible air currents had just **appeared** around Sarah. I have seen the attack before, but the absol I fought in crystal crossing had used it and it was far weaker. Three puny tornadoes spun around that absol and then he launched a blade at me. The attack was strong, but I was able to avoid it.

Sarah's attack was different. Winds whipped around her so incredibly fast that the clouds around her were being ripped apart. Her silhouette was barely visible within the swirling sphere. The roar of the sudden wind only served to distract us from the near future attack.

Rayquaza had stopped shouting at us, and watched Sarah in the same way I was doing. It was possible that he had not seen such a powerful variant of this attack. Sarah was literally starting to levitate because of the wind's power. Surrounded by the sphere of wind force, she was a yard off the ground. Soon, she would attack.

I realized now that Sarah's special capabilities would make her special attacks so much more powerful than other absol's. Even Rayquaza was just watching, as the rest of us were, as Sarah prepared to avenge Caleb. Caleb, who was groaning over where he had been tossed, starting to wake up. Sarah interrupted us by absorbing the wind energy straight into her horn and swinging her head.

**BOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW…**

The Incredible wind blade roared through the air and straight towards Rayquaza, who made no attempt to avoid it. I guess the dragon was used to not being heavily affected by attacks of this sort. Rayquaza would be one surprised dragon.

The explosion threw us all away, even Rayquaza. Real damage was visible on his side, though not as much as I would like. Despite the ridiculously powerful razor wind attack, he seemed fine enough to float there and look pissed. Before he could retaliate, Sarah collapsed in sheer exhaustion. I ran to her, still feeling exhausted. She was having trouble breathing. Maybe that was because she was in a vacuum for long enough to charge the attack. Razor wind clearly took everything out of her. "Come on, Sarah!" I yelled, worried that she had hurt herself more than she should have. MIghtyena ran over. "Sarah!" he yowled "Sarah! Wake up!"

He began to try and wake her, not realizing that in his panic, he was helping nobody doing that. With a vine, I took an oran berry out of my pack. While Mightyena was panicking, Sarah got an oran berry from me.

**BOOM!**

We were thrust back as Rayquaza got impatient. I winced as I was thrown away by the attack he used. It was an electric attack, so I was good to go mostly. Mightyena and Sarah, however, had not fared well. The thunder attack had knocked them both to the ground, twitching from residual electricity. I made the idiotic decision to get in between them and Rayquaza. He flew forward, slower than before, but faster than I could move. He batted me aside with his tail, and pain exploded in my right side. He was just too powerful. Bastiodon recovered enough to blast Rayquaza with a flash cannon, with power enough to rival Sarah's razor wind. Bastiodon truly was the strongest of us. He was immediately struck with another bolt of lightning from the sky. Bastiodon being steel and rock, the lightning did decent damage to him. Damage enough that Bastiodon fell to his stomach, creating a crater in the clouds. Machoke was out cold somehow, and my tangela were down as well. I was the only one standing.

"Please!" I shouted to the mighty dragon "We don't want to be here either! We got carried here by a cloud!"

"**SILENCE!**" Rayquaza roared at me, throwing me back to the end of the platform. I slid into the wall. "Rayquaza, please!" I pleaded "We just want to get home"

I poured genuine fear and desperation into my voice. He faltered in his next attack he was preparing, his long tail turning silver colored in an iron tail attack. When I spoke, that quality faded. He glared at me. "Please" I said again "we're just trying to get back to wigglytuff's guild". I gasped for breath, wondering what was wrong with me. Why was I having trouble breathing? Were we too high up? "We just need to get home…"

I started to lose consciousness, knowing that it was more due to the lack of oxygen up here. How had we not noticed that? Rayquaza sunk down a bit from where he was hovering to almost rest on the cloud surface. When he touched the cloud with his tail, the scene changed. Around us, a ceiling appeared, and a staircase appeared near me. How had he changed our location? I remembered faintly him saying that he was the guardian of sky tower **and **sky staircase. Could he move us between the two? I felt oxygen pour into my lungs again. We must not be so high anymore. He spoke now. "**LEAVE!**" Rayquaza bellowed "**YOU SHALL BE THE LAST TO SEE THIS PLACE. SKY STAIRWAY IS WITHIN YOUR REGION, BUT NO LONGER. I SHALL PLACE MY HOME WHERE NONE CAN FIND IT. LEAVE, AND YOUR FRIENDS WILL FIND THEMSELVES WITH YOU AT THE ENTRANCE**".

Rayquaza was taking pity on us. I was not about to waste this chance. I fumbled for my rescue badge, and made one final glance to the dragon.

"Thank you" I told him. He made a scowl at me, and then I smiled and teleported. The pillar of light pulled me out of the dungeon and straight to the entrance. The rest of the team appeared next to me, out cold, the lot of them. I looked up at the massive cloud we had just emerged from.

_It's dissolving!_

The dungeon just started to disperse and disappear. The power of Rayquaza allowed him to control the location of his home. everything but a ten yard wide cloud that held all of us well, even Bastiodon. Sky Stairway, and probably Sky Tower, were gone I looked over the edge of the cloud to see the coast, and familiar landmarks that showed the northwestern edge of a continent. Our continent. We would be home soon. I smiled, and then I just ran out of energy. I barely got myself safely back onto the cloud before I blacked out.

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**So that's how it went. Hopefully it exceeded expectations. If you enjoyed, feel free to follow or favorite the story to receive updates on new chapters and such. I hope you all enjoyed, and I will see you all next time!**

**If you have any character bio's, please send them to me via personal email. I will consider carefully, though the team members for team Amber and team Titanium have already been decided. I will gladly accept different team members for other teams, as well as any miscellaneous pokemon characters you are willing to suggest. Thank you all for your assistance in my story. **

**-Hyperjade**

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Nickname:

Age:

Gender:

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Background (this may be lengthy):

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Other:


	16. Chapter Sixteen: Spacial Revelations

**Jango: Hey, everybody! I'm here now. Now this chapter, Jake-**

**Me: I found you! What are you doing here!?**

**Jango: Oh, hey Hyper. **

**Me: Answer my question. **

**Jango: I was just chatting with the audience. Not, you know, spoiling anything. **

**Me: ...Very well. Don't you dare spoil anything to the audience. **

**Jango: You know i wont. Why would i put myself in that position?**

**Me: and stop uncensoring my stuff. I know it's you taking off the censorship on some of the curses. **

**Jango: They aren't even proper curses! And suggesting that that will hurt the rating is like saying that you can scare ants away from a picnic by pouring sugar on the ground!**

**Me: don't uncensor my stuff. **

**Jango: Don't count on that. **

**Me: *Sigh...***

* * *

Chapter 16: Spacial Revelation

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

The next thing I remembered after getting trapped in that shuppet's gaze was waking up on a cloud in the middle of nowhere. Again. For a moment, I believed that the entire thing could have been a dream, but I reminded myself that all of my dreams have been in that dream world. Then, I recalled that the cloud we used to be on was much smaller, and without much room to move around. The next thing I noticed was that a certain red absol slept very close to me. I sighed softly and got up. The others were asleep, and Servine was precariously sleeping next to the edge. I moved her away as softly as I could, trying not to wake her.

Ignoring the taste of spinach now in my mouth, I checked on the others. they seemed to be fine. Servine still slept, Bastiodon seemed not to be in danger of falling through the clouds.

The air is warmer here. just like when we… first landed on the cloud…

I looked down over the edge. The ground was very close. My head whipped up to observe clouds way above us. No clouds were otherwise in the vicinity. We were above a rocky terrain, and beyond a large bay, lights were visible. Was that the town? What on earth happened!? It should not have been possible that I was put to sleep long enough for the others to find a way back. Then again, I was not asleep, I had been…

My memories are a bit fuzzy around the moment when I saw the shuppet's eyes. I was… Confused? Makes no sense. I felt like…

I was ready to roar in frustration. of course there would be something wrong with my head after all that garbage I had to sleep through. What had I done to these guys this entire time? Had I hurt them?

I had not noticed before. I was just looking to see if they were resting.

Every one of them is damaged. Some of them badly.

Looks like whatever they did, it was not good for them. Furthermore, they had either ran out of oran berries or had not the time to eat them. With extreme difficulty and a few more curses about being a quadruped, I got out nine oran berries. I ate one, and set the rest out in the center of the platform where the others could get to it. Rejuvenated, I waited, as that was the only thing I could do. The land was slowly coming closer. Ever so slowly. I shifted from side to side, forgetting that I am now an absol and so almost fell over a few times doing so. I could balance fine unless I was only on two legs.

My thoughts turned to my dream world, and my blood turned to ice as I thought about how the kids were faring. How long was I gone this time? Were they okay?

I began to panic. I was not about to fall asleep now. I had to get back home, and I had a way to do that. The guild was dead ahead. Literally. I turned to check on the others, and saw red.

I was jump scare-tackle hugged by Sarah, who was overjoyed to see me awake and alright. I took it in utter silence because that was just who I was, but I was now pinned on the ground in a position that was incredibly embarrassing for me, as a former human. Sarah, being a pokemon all her life, apparently felt no embarrassment whatsoever. Nevertheless, I planted a paw on her face and pushed her off as quickly as possible. She was thrown clear due to my impressive absol strength, but she was smiling as she got up.

Does she think this is a game!?

"Caleb!" She cried out "You're back!"

I'm back? What on earth does that mean? I was prepared to explain to her how incredibly awkward that whole thing was, but I held myself back because she would just interpret it as me being shy or something. I have had enough of her romanticizing my actions and thoughts. I visible grew angry. I did not mean for my emotions to go out of whack, but I have found it increasingly difficult to control my temper. Perhaps it was the pesky absol instincts. I suspect I have been given some of them, considering I literally have a new brain on top of everything else. It was a miracle in that sense that my memories were not wiped completely. I thought about Jake, and wondered for a moment if that was the real reason that Jake had lost his memory, but then… Remembering two specific things clearly while the other memories were completely gone made no sense.

Sarah's smile twitched when she saw my expression, but she was pretending to be oblivious. She ran to do something again. Nuzzle me or whatever. I jumped away, almost landing on Bastiodon with my poor aim. She was prepared to chase me around this cloud as some kind of game of tag. I was not having it. The next time she got to me, I did a vanishing act by hiding behind Bastiodon's large form and using my senses to detect where Sarah was so I could walk on the opposite side of bastiodon from her. I would miss having an absol's sense when I returned home, but that was of little consequence. I was used to Sarah not using her sense very often.

I was unlucky. Sarah immediately used her sense to find me. I know she did not hear anything, because the cloud does not exactly make noise when you walk on it. She appeared on top of Bastiodon, walking lightly to avoid waking the trigger happy steel type. She looked at me. "Found you!" She said with a tone of voice that suggested euphoria. I shuddered and tried to get away. Sarah was faster than I was. She landed in front of me, and I almost could not stop myself from crashing face first into her own face. That would have been even more embarrassing for me, even though I don't know if kissing is something that pokemon do. Skidding to a stop left groove marks in the cloud.

"Please, Sarah" I said "leave me alone".

She was not paying attention. Her utter joy at seeing me awake and generally in acceptable health was completely clouding her vision. While she charged me again, I contemplated why she had fallen in love with me in the first place. If I could figure that out, maybe pushing her away would be easier.

I would not have time now. I had to take a bit of a more rude approach to this battle of will versus love. I put my paw against her face as she crashed into me and shoved her away. She was pretending to not notice my anger, but her joy was clearly real. She fell in love with me immediately. What does that mean? I searched my memories of what she had said when I had first woken up as an absol.

"wouldn't you already have a nickname from your other friends?" I had asked.

She had then looked down at her feet. "not so easy without friends" she had murmured.

So she had then proceeded to explain how the fact that she was different made her unwelcome around her own home. She had no friends, nobody to talk to without them glaring at her for being different. That is, except for the kecleon. They don't really count in this scenario however. This all meant that I was the first person to speak to her like she was a real person. Someone in such a lonely position would become attached to a potential friend immediately. That much I knew from lessons in human psychology. One might say that I was putting two and two together and coming up with seventy six, but Sarah seemed to be evidence that at least absol had similar psychological attributes to humans. In Sarah's case, it had immediately turned into a disastrous love story that could only end badly for her. I felt not anger, but sorrow now at the pain she will experience when I leave. I had failed to dissuade her, and knowing why she was so in love with me, I quailed at the thought of trying to fix it. This was no ordinary problem that I could deal with.

I had to deal with it and just leave when I had the chance. Sarah would be devastated, but I was in bad shape when I came to this.

_I'm sorry I have to do this to you, Sarah. You have no idea how sorry I am to have to break your heart, even though I never loved you back. Maybe once I am gone, you can move on with your life. I hope you can let me go, Sarah. Please let me go._

Sarah was coming again, slowly this time. She looked like she wanted to say something, but I was saved. Vines yanked Sarah away.

The tangela and Servine stood away from me, holding Sarah in the air in such a way that she could not slice the many vines entangling her. Servine nodded at me "good to see you back to your senses".

"Will somebody tell me what that means?" I asked, trying to remain calm. Servine clearly did not want to explain to me what had happened. That meant that either it was very bad, it was a very long story, or both. My guess was both, considering my luck when it comes to such situations. "Speak up" I said "I can't hear you".

She sighed. Reluctantly, she spoke "Your confusion never wore off. Furthermore, you generated a-" She choked out the words "Another, more… sinister personality and became basically the greatest nuisance of all time".

After she finished, I blinked. Then I scowled.

Of course I would be the one to get confused. Why must status conditions affect me so? Sleep was very effective, Confusion turned me into a monstrous being intent on harming others, poison hurt really bad. What would paralysis do? Turn me into a living generator in constant pain?

"Right…" I muttered, walking away now "Right. Of course. I could have expected something different to happen if I had seen it coming. Anything else?"

"Fought Rayquaza, who finally knocked you out and stopped the confusion, then we were basically destroyed by Rayquaza. Afterwards, he took pity on us and sent us back down, thankfully not the hard way, and made his tower vanish to some location where nobody will ever find it. We all fell unconscious on this thing, and here we are" Servine finished.

Huh. I guess there were some blanks to fill in there, but I did not care. As long as I did not hurt any of them, that was fine. I searched the sleeping forms of the pokemon around me. They bore plenty of wounds, but none appeared to have been caused by a certain glowing crystal sword. I relaxed a bit, knowing that A: I was not responsible for too much pain other than some psychological damage, and B: Sarah was restrained and would not be scaring me with any sudden hugs anytime soon.

I looked back at the group, and said "you four grab an oran berry. Leave the other three for the sleeping pokemon". They went to comply, Servine letting Sarah go but keeping an eye on her. As they grabbed an oran berry each, I checked back at the guild. We were coming up behind it, heading straight for it. To my surprise, we began to speed up tremendously when we got close. We shot straight towards the cliff underneath the guilds entrance. We were coming in at the wrong angle, and it was going to hurt a lot.

"Heads up!" I yowled at the others, prompting them to look at the cliff coming at us at terminal velocity. The cloud began to break up, and we pulled team rush towards the center. Impact in five…

Suddenly, I noticed that we were heading for a large window in the cliff face. One that belonged to a certain volatile guildmaster. I hoped he would not punish us for breaking his perfectly nice window.

_Will I have a fear of pink things when this is all over? I already have developed irrational phobias of mirrors and statues, will I ever recover from being in this world?_

CRASH!

We blasted straight through the room. I saw no guildmaster, but there was the door, and it was not going to be so kind to us as the glass was. I had a few glass shards stuck in my side, but pain was of little consequence.

CLANG!

Our group of nine blasted the doors right off their hinges, and tumbled to a painful, sliding stop. We just laid there for a few minutes. None of us wanted to even open our eyes. I was laying on the side with glass embedded in it, hurting a ton, and I fully expected to be chewed out by Chatot or someone else for needlessly breaking through Wigglytuff's room.

We groaned a bit, hoping that things would not suddenly break down on us. I heard moans from somewhere in front of me that was not one of us. Another moan could be heard behind me. We had crashed into some people.

A lot of people apparently. There were plenty of moans and groans from the surrounding pokemon. It sounded like we had demolished the entire guild or something. I refused to open my eyes, but I allowed myself to roll onto my glass free back and lay like that to avoid further injury.

"Hiya!" I heard. I opened one eye to find Wigglytuff standing right over me. He had not a scratch on him. Chatot was next to him, badly damaged in comparison to Wigglytuff. Frankly, Chatot looked like he had been put through a blender or something. A large cut ran down his wing, and his beak looked a little scratched up. He had assorted signs of damage all over him. The guildmaster began speaking in his female sounding voice.

"You're just in time for the morning cheer!" he squeaked happily. The morning cheer? We crashed straight into that? Chatot saved me from being forced to sing with glass in my side. "Guildmaster!" Chatot exclaimed "Should we not tend to the wounds of the pokemon here first?"

_Thank you, Chatot. You are now my best pokemon friend._

Wigglytuff finally noticed the damage, and immediately blasted that familiar pink pulsing attack into my face. I felt it enter my body, spreading a warm feeling into my entire form. The glass was pushed out as my body healed itself completely. I felt absolutely fine. I jolted to my feet, almost stepping on a glass shard on the floor there. Wigglytuff began walking towards the others, but I spoke up. "Wigglytuff!" I called "Heal Chimecho first, so that she can assist in the healing!"

Wigglytuff thanked me, calling me friend again, and rushed over to the nearly unconscious Chimecho, who had been tossed over by the ladder somehow, even though we were traveling in the opposite direction. Chimecho immediately went to the center of the room and rang out with heal bell. It was extraordinary. I felt even more energy pour into me just hearing her chimes. The healing move at full power had everyone standing in two minutes.

No wonder you don't hear about pokemon dying before they go from old age. moves like this exist and serve to heal any battle wound. Wigglytuff's healing attack is faster, almost instant, but heal bell just picked up an entire room full of pokemon.

So then everyone gathered, and started asking questions immediately. Some walked over to me, but I shooed them away saying that I had missed a lot of it. The rest of the guild members mobbed my allies and asked where we had been for the past month. Like I do, I avoided the euphoria and the happiness of being 'home'. this was not home for me. Instead, I did the responsible thing and walked over to Chatot and Wigglytuff.

"Those eight must rest today" I told them "We have been through many battles, most of which dangerous and stressful. I won't have my team doing anything else today, that's for certain. I have a feeling that Mightyena and Servine will agree with me here".

Chatot spoke up in his singsong voice. "We had no intention of sending you out to work today, nor the next day. You may rest for as long as you need". I looked at him, grateful. My expression hardened as I prepared to have a chat with a certain raichu about his little lie, and then I would find somebody to tell me about Palkia. Speaking of Palkia…

"Who can I ask about Palkia?" I asked, startling them. "Palkia?" Chatot asked, surprised by my change of topic. "I need to know everything" I said "where to find him, what he is, ETC. It is of the utmost importance".

"Jake would be the one you're looking for" I heard Chimecho chime behind me "But you are not going anywhere without rest".

"False" I said "I cannot rest now. If I am to meet Palkia, then I must learn where he is. I will not rest yet, not until I have found what I need".

"You want to meet Palkia!?" Chatot exclaimed, fluttering in place, some fear in his voice. I did not answer, instead walking towards the ladder. Chimecho floated in front of me. "I must insist you rest!" She chimed. I became annoyed. "No" I told her, before trying to walk around her.

"This is no request!" Chimecho said, her voice suddenly an octave lower. She appeared in front of me, and her eyes began to glow. I wondered what she was about to do, considering her psychic could not touch me at all. I glared at her, foolishly making eye contact. Chimecho's eyes glowed with a brighter intensity, and suddenly everything got awful dark.

Warmth. A bed underneath my sleeping body. Sheets, like a human bed. I was not stupid enough to believe that I had just woken up back home. This was the dream world.

Darn it all, Chimecho. I need to know about Palkia!

Well, after that unfortunate situation, I sighed and decided to make the best of the situation. It has likely been a while since I saw those kids anyhow. I hoped they had not hurt themselves. I got up, ripping the sheets in the process with my claws. I mentally fixed them before exiting. It was night outside, and there were no obvious sounds of playing outside.

I checked the kid's rooms. They were there, sleeping. Child Caleb was snoring away.

I guess I snore, too. Hope I did not keep my team awake like that.

Child Sarah was asleep, sprawled out on her bed that had her partially on the ground. It seems she tosses and turns in her sleep, though I have never seen Sarah doing that. I smiled and exited the room quietly. I went into the empty room across the hall, that had nothing yet. I first placed a misshapen stone that had a flat top in the center, low enough for the Children to see the top easily. I put a book there, placed so that when I opened it would be in the center. On the cover, I made the words 'updates' appear. I imagined that I could make this do things while I was awake. I did not know, however, how to make a mental connection between something like this and me when I was awake.

I tried to do it, thinking about connecting this directly to myself when I was awake, and setting it up to respond to a code sentence: 'dear Caleb and Sarah'. I had no idea if it had worked at all, but I wanted to try it.

Dear Caleb and Sarah, I thought, and the book immediately flipped open to the first page. I have created a way to let you know what I am doing where I am. I do not know how to let you talk to me. I do not know how well this will work later. I'm glad I tried, however. Take care.

The words I thought appeared on the page as I thought them, including the 'dear Caleb and Sarah'. It worked here, but would it work when I was awake? The book closed on it's own as soon as five seconds passed when I said 'take care'. Hopefully, it would open to the most recent page when the kids came to it.

Now to decide what to do with the rest of the room. I could put entertainment options into it, like toys or something. It felt awkward presenting them with toys, especially my child counterpart. I was literally providing myself with toys that I myself would not use. These two, however, were children and would likely adore it. Instead of toys I placed a large obstacle course there, a sort of condensed playground. I did not go in it, because I had set it up for somebody smaller than me. It would do for now.

I walked outside into the night sky. I had forgotten to put stars in this world, but they were there anyhow. They were stars from my world. The north star in the distance, most of the constellations in the correct locations, but it was a bit warped because of my imperfect memory. A shame. They looked beautiful anyways. I relaxed a bit, knowing that nothing could go wrong here and now. If something did, I could obliterate the threat in an instant being in control of the entire world here.

I wanted to make certain that nothing would go wrong here. I needed to make certain that nothing was a danger here ever. It was a dream, but after all the impossible things I had seen, it was not impossible that some pokemon could enter dreams or something. I looked towards the arena I had placed and walked there.

The dead of night had plenty of moonlight thanks to the full moon on the horizon. It was always a full moon, like the last time I saw the night in this place. The arena in front of me glowed with the same color. I walked onto the solid surface. First, I would perfect ways to attack with dream powers. I willed the ground around me to distort and rise up in a circular hill, with me in the crater. I sent it rippling out as silently as I could. Just for fun, next time I did it, I triggered the attack by stamping the ground. the distortion did not affect the environment, just anything that was not supposed to be here.

I could control the different things around me with something resembling telepathy. I was moving stuff around with no issue. I was truly overpowered in this world, but I was not always here. I needed someone, or something to protect this place while I was gone, maybe keep the kids company.

So I focused on my memories. Could I bring somebody from my memories here as a construct? I thought about my old friends. Which of them would not turn tail and run at the sight of danger? A few. One in particular enjoyed weapon manufacturing. That guy actually made a good friend, scaring off some others that were ready to attack. He really enjoyed using a quarterstaff that he had made out of wood, and two snow saws that he made out of aluminum. He practiced fighting styles with the weapons quite often, using an unorthodox mix of quick strikes and brutal final attacks with the quarterstaff, and he had plenty of ways to fight with two snow saws, even though he never fought against actual people with them for obvious reasons, he had techniques for trapping swords and staves with the snow saws and basically has a response for a lot of instances with the two weapon types.

I remembered my good human friend clearly, and built an image of him in my mind. Red, short hair, blue and grey coat that he wore no matter what the temperature was. Black sweat pants and a black and white t-shirt. Two homemade sheaths containing snow saws, and a quarterstaff that has one end slightly thicker than the other. I made the quarter staff into a white metal instead of wood, and the saws became a grey metal. He appeared in front of me.

After about a minute of just doing nothing, he opened blue eyes and glanced around him. He was very calm, which is to be expected considering I had not really given him any emotions on purpose. He was likely to not be as lifelike as the child versions of me and Sarah. He gazed at me, and I set his purpose into the very fabric of the world.

Protect this place. Keep the children company while I am gone.

"Why?" Riley asked me. I jumped at that.

_What on earth?_

"This place should not need protecting" Riley said, leaning on a nearby rock "Honestly, this place is the safest place out there".

My mind was reeling from that. Was I really capable of constructing sentient creatures, or was he feeding off of my earlier doubts? He also had a completely different attitude from my friend Riley. Why was he unlike him in personality, if he had a real consciousness at all?

"I believed that" I said "I wished to be cautious". He looked at me, and said "I will be cautious too, but come on. The chances of meeting any danger here? Slim".

Arrogant, wasn't he? How did that come about? Am I slightly arrogant? Does this mean that I should cool it a bit in the outside world? So far, this was not looking fantastic. What was interesting is that he already seemed to be developing in a way that I had not expected him to. How was he doing that, anyhow? He was a dream construct, and not even one like the children. How was he progressing?

"I expect you want to know what I can do" Riley said, startling me out of my musings. I did in fact want to know how effective a fighter this Riley was. I prepared myself for a fight, but Riley produced an apple out of **nowhere** and started eating it. He seemed to be doing his best to look like an asshole, but I could tell it was for show. He was waiting on me to attack first.

I complied, knowing that I was not attacking a typical weak human like Riley would have been. This Riley had improved strength and speed, and a similar ability that pokemon share that allows their bodies to stiffen up when they are unconscious that made them hard to kill. He should not be easy to defeat, if I had done my job correctly

I would love to say that I proved a worthy opponent in the battle against Riley. The truth? I had my ass handed to me. My first strike hit nothing but rock as he spiraled above me and drove the heavy end of the quarterstaff straight into my skull. Stars filled my vision as I tried to get back up, but Riley had me in the air real quick by levering me up with the staff and smacking me upward in one swift motion. he spun his staff around and jumped, blasting me straight into the rock. My horn got stuck in the rock, leaving me hanging there. He finished off with a brutal attack that consisted of treating his staff like a spear, straight into the side of my head.

I groaned a bit while resting, after Riley pulled me out of the rock. He was there, inspecting his weapon, which seemed to be fine. It was in better shape than I was at any rate. "You know…" Riley said "The memories of my former self that came from you don't match me at all…"

"You can see some of my memories?" I asked. I guess I put more than I intended to into this being. "A few" he muttered "You aren't the best at focusing on the task at hand. I have a few blurry memories, but those are going away. From what I can tell, the one you knew was completely different from me".

That was heartfelt, and I felt sorry to hear that I had failed to recreate him. This Riley was completely different from that one, and because of the issue I had with keeping memories away from him, he knew it. He appeared saddened. "I could… Try again" I offered "if it's too much trouble to remember".

He looked surprised, as if he had not expected the offer. "No thank you. It is most likely because of those memories that I am able to show emotion at all" Riley said "I can handle this. I'm afraid that the two kids you have here will fear me, though".

I wondered about that. "The children have accepted everything so far" I said "just act friendly, and avoid swinging the staff at them". He smiled at that. "No attacking the poor kids" he summed up "got it".

"You have a memory of those two then?" I asked, and he shook his head. "Huh? Then how do you know about them?" he laughed and said "not telling you". I frowned at him, and began to look up at the stars. He followed suit. "Those stars aren't the exact same as they were at home. I did not remember them correctly" I said. He was looking at them. "That's fine" he said "if things go according to your plan, that will be of little consequence. You will see them again".

I smiled at that. Even though he was a bit more arrogant, he was as good of a friend as he had been when I met him I looked back on that day, remembering it clearly.

* * *

I was walking past a place where staff fighting lessons were taught, on my own. I had been taking a walk alone to clear my head and finally relax a bit. I heard arguing behind the window. A student with red hair, about my age, was using an unorthodox fighting style with the quarterstaff, and winning. At least, it looked like it. The instructor eventually figured it out that this kid was getting hit as much as he hit the instructor, like a kind of mutual destruction combat system. The student, being younger and weaker than the instructor, tired out first. That instructor had been angry with the kid's antics, and informed him of the difficulties associated with that combat system. That kid had been paying attention, but instead of following orders, he continued to ask questions, like "If I am stronger than my opponents, they would fall first, right?" and "What if I fought somebody who had no staff?"

After pointless arguing, the instructor informed this kid and his parents that if he would not listen, there was no point in coming here. Lucky me, I met the guy there. I rested near the entrance. I don't know why I waited there. I just did. He walked out. He saw me and asked who I was. He paid no heed to his parents, who looked plenty mad. It appeared as though he had no knowledge of it. My guess was he asked for this lesson, and threw it away because he was unaware that there would not be room for creative invention when it came to paid lessons in fighting. They taught the most effective fighting styles. "Hi" I said.

He looked at me, just leaning on the post nearby. He responded slowly. "'sup?" he asked in an unfortunate attempt to match the way some others talked. Why was he so free with his fighting style but was trying to mimic the mainstream manner of speech. why was that? "My name is Caleb" I told him "and I am doing well, thank you". He grinned in response. I tried to smile, but failed miserably. He saw my half scowl, and did not misinterpret it somehow. "You need to work on your smiling" he said, and with a last smile, he turned away.

"What is your name?" I asked. Why did I ask? I don't really know.

"Riley" the kid said with a slight smirk, and walked off

So I met a random kid who turned out to be a good friend. His fighting style grew more deadly looking by the day when I was visiting him at his home. The snow at the time was harsh, and there was a layer of ice. Riley was practicing a move with the snow saws. he stabbed the ice and broke it, and backed up. I presume he waited for an enemy to step in that spot. He prepared a circle of cracked ice, buried under the snow. He tested it, and suddenly sunk a foot deeper. Neat trick, but only a mild inconvenience.

Riley shrugged when I told him so. "If I ever need to set up a trap in the future…"

"Who on earth do you think will attack you?" I asked. He shrugged again. The thing was, nothing would ever attack him. He just enjoyed swinging his weapons around in a fancy manner, and used training as an excuse. He did not need an excuse, and I told him so.

"Ah, well" Riley said "It's fun to imagine what I could do if I actually was attacked". I imagined it as well, him running about, smacking apart somebody who was attacking. Somebody without weapons would be a piece of cake. Problem was, anybody who knew how to use a proper weapon would probably cause plenty of damage to him. I let it be.

* * *

Now I was an absol, in an unfamiliar world, and I had just recreated my best friend. Well, mostly. He was not my old friend. My old friend Riley was at home wondering where I have been for the past month and a week. This Riley was my new friend.

New. New and improved. I just replaced my old friend with a copy of him. What does that make me? Does it make me untrustworthy, or does it just mean that I was missing my old friend?.

I could have made any old guard. I did not. I made a clone of my friend. Why would I do that?

I did it because I miss talking to a friend that has stuck with me since the day I met him. I did it because I needed another way to relax. This is another escape for me in a world of escapes

My smile vanished. Riley noticed, but said nothing. He chuckled a bit, confusing me. What was up? Was he ten minutes old and already playing a joke on me? "That did not take long" I muttered, and he chuckled a bit louder.

Crash!

I was hit in the back from my sitting position. I yowled with surprise and tried to roll to counterattack, but I froze.

"Caleb!" a familiar small red absol cried out from where she was standing on my chest. Her face real close to mine. I almost had a reaction that was similar to when Sarah had jumped me, but I restrained myself. I was going to say something but Child Caleb appeared in my field of view "It's been days!" he cried, jumping on me as well. They tried to wrestle, but I did not move a muscle for a moment. I just blinked a few times. "uh… hi guys" I said lamely. They looked at me. "Are you alright?" they asked.

"I'm fine" I said "just surprised". Their smiles returned. "That's right" I said "you got me. Good one". Riley had gotten me, too, pretending they were not there. They squealed with delight like a young child would and went on jumping on me. I wrestled back, pushing them off, and got up quickly. Riley was laughing at me. "You seem used to that body" he said "perhaps you should keep it".

Well that turned my blood to ice. I whipped my head over to him, which distracted me from the kids, who smashed me down again. They were getting stronger, it seemed. My fear was that Riley was absolutely right. I was getting used to my body, and the more I was used to it, the harder it would be to become human again. I might have trouble walking again if I got too comfortable. Riley saw my uneasiness. "So, no jokes about your body" Riley said. I nodded from where I was pinned. I rolled over, and the two of those kids toppled off. They jumped to their paws and looked at me, glee in their eyes. They had not even noticed Riley yet.

"Meet my new friend" I said, lifting a foreleg towards Riley. They whirled around and jumped in surprise. "Whoa!" they yelled "Who's he?!"

"A friend" I told them "he will never have to leave like I will. Meet Riley".

He looked at me like: _Thank you for solidifying me as these kid's playmate. Smooth move, dude._

The sarcasm in his look was all too apparent, but I could tell he was going to be fine. Nobody could resist the puppy eyes these kids gave. Not even a slightly arrogant version of my best friend. Good times would be had by all, including me. We walked in the moonlight, viewing the different scenes available all over again for Riley. He took it all in in silence. After a few hours, we returned to the house using one of the fancy teleports. We walked in, and it felt even warmer than outside. The kids walked by the new room, then did a double take and walked back to it. I watched in amusement as they suddenly called out and rushed in as fast as possible. Me and Riley peered in to see them sprinting around the compact obstacle course. "Huh" Riley said. I nodded, even though he was not looking at me. after they ran around it for about ten minutes, and then found the book in the center of the room.

I walked forward, and stopped at the book, which the children were peering at. It flipped open on it's own to show my message. I spoke. "This should allow me to speak to you when I am elsewhere. If there is a message from me, the book will be open. When you finish reading it, the book will close. I will do my best to make it work, though I don't know if it will".

They stared at the item, and suddenly they were all over me in happiness, cheering and tackling me and all that stuff. It took an entire minute for them to calm themselves. They wanted to see it work. I closed my eyes.

_Dear Caleb and Sarah_ I thought, and the book flew open to a new page _When this book is open, it should mean that I am sending you a message. It might not work outside of here, but I will do my best. Please stay safe when I need to be elsewhere. Riley will help you with that. Have fun whenever you can, because nothing will stop you. Nothing._

The words appeared on the page, and when the kids had apparently finished reading, it snapped shut. I smiled, and then wondered how much time I had been here. "I don't know how much time I have left" I said, and they looked at me "I could vanish any moment, so let me make a final adjustment…"

They backed up while I stood in the doorway and increased the size of the mazelike obstacle course, surrounding the book except for a glass window to see the book through. "If you see that the book is open" I said "Feel free to take the challenge of going through the course to get to it. If you would rather not…". I placed a stairway up and over the window "You can just climb that. Is that satisfactory?"

They answered yes by jumping on me again. For the next few hours, we acquainted Riley with his new home, and I gave him the human bed in my room. I made myself another bed in another empty room, though I made this tougher and more easily exited by me. It looked like a mix of a human bed and a pokemon bed. I guess that fits me pretty well at this point.

Later, we looked at the moon for a bit. It moved quickly, it seemed. The barest amount of light was visible on the other side of the house, and the moon was sinking. I was feeling utter euphoria now, having forgotten all my troubles temporarily. It vanished when I felt a shudder pass through me, and I started to fade. Again. I almost wished I could just sleep forever. I said my goodbyes, and asked the kids to tell me if the book got my message, and they promised. Riley gave me a goodbye wave, and the kids went ahead and said their goodbyes as well. Everything faded to black again.

I woke up naturally, and I thought that there must be some mistake. We were in the guild right? Loudred should have woken us up. Instead of the noisy purple beast, the small floating Chimecho was above me. My smile vanished. I had been smiling? do I do that every time I dream?

Chimecho floated away from me in case I did anything rash. I might have if I had not just had a very relaxing night with good friends. It was time to make sure that there was no problem with my design.

_Dear Caleb and Sarah… This has been immediate, but I wish to check to make certain this is working. Have fun today, okay, kids?_

I waited for about five seconds, and then resumed my focus on the real world. Chimecho was eyeing me cautiously, and I grew irritated.

"Chimecho, if you are here for a reason, please speak up" I said groggily, struggling to stand. How my leg ached! I almost fell back over. What was up with that? I felt worse than I did when Chimecho put me to sleep. I groaned a bit, and then looked her in the eyes, daring her to test me. I was not about to let her of all pokemon get in my way of reaching home. I realized I was not being fair; I had not told her of my origin or my drive.

"Don't push yourself too hard" she warned as I stretched ineffectively. I probably should be stretching like an absol would for now, but I had never really paid attention to when Sarah had done so. Of course I had not. I was not some lovesick puppy like Sarah or Mightyena…

_Get it together. You're throwing insults out at random now._

Why did I feel so angry? It was as if there was something making me angry, but I did not press into the issue. Home was priority one. Nothing could come before it, not even these petty annoyances. I cursed myself for letting her put me to sleep like that. I walked towards the door slowly. My right foreleg complained again, and I saw why when I looked down. it looked burned or something. "What happened?" I demanded, and Chimecho looked down. Had she done this to me?

"I don't know" She half sobbed "it just appeared while you slept. I could not heal them". She was bawling now. I turned around and walked to her. She recoiled, but I was as gentle as I could be. "It's all right" I told her "It hurts, but I believe it is not your fault. It's okay, Chimecho. But what I need to do next is the most important thing so far in my life. I must discover where palkia is. Please do not stop me now. What you can do is find team thunderwave and bring him to me if he is not at the first floor. I don't believe I should be walking much in this condition".

She obediently floated away, making wind chime noises as she flew. I followed her into the main room, where Nincada was waiting. He appeared out of the ground to greet me, but immediately saw my damaged legs. "Caleb!" he exclaimed "You're hurt!"

"Thanks for the heads up" I replied drily. I could hope it heals before things went badly. I inspected the paw. The hairs where the 'burn' was had gone dark grey, and one of my claws was misshapen. It looked frightening, to be honest, and it hurt. The affected claw was serrated a bit. Chimecho could not heal it, but could Wigglytuff?

Chimecho floated back down the ladder, followed by a certain raichu and then his swampert partner. As much as I wanted to wring the guy's neck for lying to me, I had other things to do.

_Hold it there, Caleb. You aren't wringing anybody's neck, okay?_

Why was I so aggressive? Did it have something to do with this awful burn I had? The pain certainly brought down my mood. Jake made it to the bottom and turned around, that fear still evident in his eyes. He had been shaken to the core by what he had seen of my future. So scared was he that he could not make himself tell me what was up. He looked like he inspected an interrogation. I would interrogate him, but this was about Palkia.

He went to say something, but changed his mind and waited for me to start. The poor raichu was trembling at the very sight of me. Other pokemon were glancing at me too, probably at the burns on my legs. "Chimecho" I said "Do you think Wigglytuff's heal pulse can fix my legs?"

"I will see" Chimecho simply said, and floated away. Jake tensed even more, sensing the lack of believable witnesses. Why was he afraid that I would hurt him?

_Let the interrogation begin._

"Tell me where to find Palkia" I said, keeping it simple. "P-P-Palkia?" He stammered. "Yes, Palkia" I said "he is my best chance to get home".

"Uh…" He said, still afraid. I stepped forward, and he stepped back. Swampert took a step forward threateningly, in case I was going to attack. "Tell me" I said darkly "I will not be prevented from returning home".

"We… We met him in the spacial rift to the northwest!" Jake got out.

"And how do I get there?"

"I don't know! He grabbed us from sharpedo bluff on night and attacked us!" Jake exclaimed. That was true enough, I could tell from his voice. "We haven't been there since!"

"I believe you" I said. He looked up, surprised. "You do?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes" I said "I may not believe that you don't know how I will get home, but I know that it must be important if you did not tell me. I will let that slide. I do not expect it to happen again, but you have my full forgiveness. Please do not keep information from me in the future".

He visibly relaxed a bit, his tail stopped glowing with charged electricity. I was not going to hurt him, and he knew it. He still seemed afraid of me, but less now. What was up with that? Wigglytuff came bounding over, with Chatot behind him. and saw my damaged legs. He immediately tried a heal pulse, but I felt no change. He inspected it. I have never seen him so serious. He looked up and shook his head. Chatot seemed a little frightened at the guildmaster's sudden intensity and focus. Wigglytuff was really worried.

"It's no normal burn" Chimecho said quietly from behind Wigglytuff. I grew worried at the fact that Wigglytuff could not heal me. Jake paid attention to the burn for the first time, and recoiled. "That's…" he exclaimed, and we all turned to him. Swampert came to his defence. "Does it look similar to a vision you had?"

"Yeah…" He said "A while ago…". He was not saying anything, and it suggested that it had been the vision of me that he was talking about. Again, whatever frightened him in that vision had him too scared to talk about it. It worried me, but I wanted to be a bit respectful to the guy. As long as it was not life threatening, it was okay. I supposed that he must have seen this burn on me in the vision, either meaning it will happen soon, or this burn was sticking around for a while. Either way, it was unlikely that it would matter. I just hoped that it would not stick around if I returned home.

_When, Caleb. When._

I was losing focus again. "If anybody here has any idea of how to get to the spacial rift where Palkia is, I need to know immediately". Chatot and Wigglytuff looked at me immediately. "According to Jake, the spacial rift is a very difficult dungeon, and should not be traversed by untrained exploration teams" Chatot said harshly, and was going to continue, but Wigglytuff clearly saw my urgency. "Perhaps Lapras would know" he said "He travels to the hidden land, so he may know of Palkia's domain as well" he said. All of that happiness was gone from him for the moment. He knew how serious this was, but I had no idea how he knew. Chatot was not so convinced. "You must not go there without more experience!" he said loudly. I scowled, and said "May I speak with you privately?"

He looked at me strangely, but my face was solid, staring right into his eyes. He was unnerved by glare, as I intended. He stammered "Yes of course", and we walked away from the others. I heard Wigglytuff resume his normal cheerful attitude when he began to speak with Jake and Swampert. We left the group behind, and entered the team's quarters. Not our own, another unused one. Chatot turned around. "What do you wish to speak with me about?" he asked.

"I feel the need to explain to you why I am so keen on meeting Palkia" I explained calmly. He cocked his head to the side and continued listening. "I am certain that Wigglytuff has already discovered this, but I must say it. It pains me to say it because I am uncertain, but you must not stop me from trying to see Palkia. I woke up at Crystal Crossing, unsure of where I was. My path so far has been to get home, and only Palkia can help me with that now.

I paused, and Chatot still listened. I was glad he was such a good listener, but he might get a good laugh out of this next fact. "I used to be human, Chatot. I remember everything about my home, and that is why it is so important for me to find Palkia and return to my home. I am certain you can understand".

Chatot was utterly silent for a moment, and suddenly began laughing. Hard.

"Hee hee hee hee hee!" He laughed in his singsong bird voice. "I know there have been three humans turned to pokemon so far in the last two years, but you expect me to believe that you are one as well?"

My calm turned to rage in an instant. There is almost nothing more aggravating to me than being called a liar. it is unacceptable. "Yes" I said powerfully "I would expect someone I am speaking to to accept the truth". My tone of voice shut down Chatot's laughter, and he saw something above me. It must be the sword glowing red. He looked fearful, suddenly, and I made efforts to calm down. The red tint to the room turned blue again as I regained control over my emotions. the dark coloring on my leg tingled, and I looked down to see it shrink. Chatot saw it too.

I calmed myself more by breathing deeply. I filled my thoughts with nothing but absolute calm. the pain faded. I replaced the calm with thoughts of friends I had left, people I was on a mission to see again. Something else replaced calm, and the burn like marks vanished. The affected claw was no longer serrated. I could beat that type of affliction with what, love? is that the emotion? I was not used to feeling it nowadays.

"That worked better than I expected" I said, and turned away. "You have the choice to try and stop me, but I would beg you not to. I have a home to get back to. A family. Friends. Please help me instead. And Chatot?"

"Yes?" Chatot asked

"Remember to set the explorer badges to take pokemon to the guild again" I said "We are back after all".

I walked out then, Chatot followed me but he had other things to do, like dispersing the crowd of pokemon that had witnessed the entire thing. A grim smile appeared on my face.

One less obstacle in my way. One less obstacle in between me and home.

Jake was still where I had left the guy, and he was speaking with Wigglytuff. Wigglytuff was acting childish as I expected to, though his seriousness when he was trying to heal that freaky burn that was now gone had scared me a bit. It had solidified that he knew what I was, and that he knew any situation involving me was serious. Things certainly seemed to blow up when I was around. Another reason to get out of this freaky world as soon as possible.

He saw me, flinched, and then tried to relax. His tail was twitching with nervous energy. I thought it odd for a moment, but I have been experiencing some pokemon instincts myself, and it was not unreasonable that he would instinctively make raichu actions of nervousness. I flinched every time I bent my head down to smell something for no reason myself. I inspected my three claws on my paw. They were incredibly sharp, and my muscles were powerful. I could slash things apart at will. Those and my horn helped me accomplish this as well. That infernal thing was an obstacle to my sleep schedule, because as a human I always slept on my right side. Now I had to sleep on my left. It annoyed me that I could not stop myself from impaling myself into the ground at first every single time. There was nothing human about me. If only I could have still been bipedal when I transformed.

I went to him and greeted Jake and Wigglytuff. Swampert was not there, perhaps he was at the job board. That seemed to be what these pokemon here lived for. He nodded slowly back. I went to Wigglytuff who was standing there, watching. "Can you tell me where to find Lapras?" I asked. He did not answer, just stared at me.

"Uh, Caleb?" Jake said. "Not now" I said. I walked closer to Wigglytuff. "Wigglytuff?" I asked again. He did not move a muscle. What was up with him? His freaky round eyes just stared straight at me. I had the freaky, paranoid thought that he was staring straight into my soul. "Uh… Wigglytuff? Guildmaster? I need to know how to find Lapras".

"Caleb…" Jake said slowly, like he was warning me. Warning me about what?

"ZzZzzz…" Wigglytuff snored. Whoa, he was sleeping? His eyes were wide open! That was the creepiest thing since waterfall cave. I stepped back. I got over my uneasiness and stepped forward again. I prodded him. "Wake up, Wigglytuff!"

That was incredibly stupid of me. Wigglytuff woke with a start, and said "HIYA!". I was launched by the resulting sound wave, as was Jake. Us two humans were thrown straight through the room, and then a hallway, and finally crashed into the mess hall. This was much to the surprise of a certain chimecho. We crashed into something, and I got buried in something. I saw blue and pink, yellow, and an assortment of other colors. What was I under?

"Ah!" Chimecho chimed in a high pitched voice "What are you doing?"

This was Chimecho, and we were in the mess hall, as far as I could figure from my knowledge of the layout of the guild. That meant we were buried in…

_Whoops. How many berried did we just crush?_

Me and Jake, with the help of Wigglytuff, just crushed some of the food supplies. I felt liquids soaking into my fur, probably berry juices. If I opened my mouth, I would get a taste of several different berries. My eyes got juices from some berry in them, and I closed them quick to avoid more issues.

I heard the bounding sound of Wigglytuff approaching. "Is everything all right, Chimecho?" he asked. Did he not know what had just transpired? "Two pokemon just crashed into the berry pile!" Chimecho exclaimed. Wigglytuff walked closer. I made a sound without moving my mouth, and Wigglytuff laughed.

_Laugh it up, fuzzball._

I struggled a bit, and felt my claws pierce more berries. Suddenly, the berries began to quiver around me. From the top to the bottom, they floated up and away. The good ones, that is. The ones we crushed were left to soak into us. My mouth mostly free, I allowed myself a grunt of annoyance. I opened my eyes, which still stung from berry juices.

"What are you silly pokemon doing playing in the berries?" Wigglytuff laughed. He thought we were playing? "Um... " Chimecho said. I twisted my head a bit. We were close to the ground, and though we had smashed a good amount of berries, it seemed we had crashed into the base of the pile. Chimecho was assembling the rest, thankfully most of them, back into the pile. I looked at Wigglytuff, and then back at Jake. "You" I said to Jake "Could have warned me not to wake him up".

He looked incredibly sheepish. "Sorry" he said. I rolled my eyes and looked back at Chimecho, who was whispering to Wigglytuff. I tuned in with my vastly superhuman hearing. It did not rival a mightyena's in the slightest, and it was selective. If I was not trying to listen, I heard only a little more than a human would. I could hear Chimecho.

"Guildmaster" Chimecho said "I think these two just woke you up".

"A good thing too! Thank you, friends!" he said, before picking up an apple and swallowing it whole "I had no idea Chimecho was giving food away today!"

I stared blankly at the pink furball. Chimecho looked horrified. "Wigglytuff" I groaned, and he turned to me with his unblinking eyes "You accidentally used hyper voice on us…". He looked between me and the pile of berries. "Oh…" he said, seeming disappointed. "I was going to ask" I said "where can I find Lapras?"

He grew a little more serious then, and Chimecho sighed and went back to fixing the damage. "Lapras will likely only speak with me. I will have to visit the place I first met Lapras tonight. Today, I believe Chimecho has ordered you to rest".

Man, this world was fantastic at stalling me. First the freaky transformation, then the month long time transport, and now I had to heal from freaking injuries. If there was nothing to be done, I guess I would just go back to bed. "Very well" I muttered, and began the process of extracting myself from the berry mess. Jake had already done so and was heading towards the door.

"Is there any way to wash this stuff off?" I asked Jake while we walked away.

"One".

So we traveled over to the corridor where the team's quarters were. We took three quick rights and ended up not in the main room, but an entirely different room.

"Uh…" I said " we should be in the main room right now".

"Don't be ridiculous" Jake said as he walked towards the pools in the center of the room. Waterfalls came straight from the ceiling, straight into the center of the pools. The pool was shallow, and had no visible drain, yet the water levels did not rise. Jake looked at me. "You have never seen anything like this?"

"There is nothing magical about the human world. We can't go about breaking the laws of physics on a daily basis. In the human world, this room is completely impossible. Not even thinking about how this is where the main room should be, that water should be filling the room right now. Don't even get me **started** on that window" I said, gesturing to the impossible window in the wall, overlooking the sea "I call shenanigans on that window".

"Oh…" Jake said "Well, isn't it awesome?"

"It freaks me right out" I said, shuddering.

"Well, get washed up before you go around anymore today. Don't join me in here unless you want to get electrocuted". I saw the sense in that as he jumped into that pool. The guy's body was full of electricity somehow, and water contact would be unhealthy for me. I walked over to the next one over, and just stood in the waterfall for a while. The water was heated, like a shower of sorts. I enjoyed it so much, having not had a proper shower for weeks. My contented sigh was drowned out by the water. I was probably completely clean after a few minutes of turning around in there, even rolling over because the water was not cleaning my chest and underside properly. I made certain that the space under my armor was not filled with berry juices. I don't know how long I stayed in there, but it took quite a bit of effort to make myself leave.

Soaking wet, I came out and met with Jake again. He was laughing a bit. "Fifteen minutes?" he asked "was that necessary?" I had been in there for fifteen minutes? "Sorry" I said "it's been too long since I had a shower". He looked at me strangely, and I explained a bit what a shower was to humans, and how it was sort of a requirement. He found that weird, but being an amnesiac raichu, that made sense. He had basically been raised from the point he woke up here in pokemon customs. In essence, he was a pokemon. It just happened that he used to not be.

We chatted for a bit, talking about his first days. One thing caught my attention.

"You knew what pokemon were?" I asked. He said yes, he had, and I explained that pokemon are not even a concept in my world. He then explained to me what they had found out about his past, or rather future. He had been around in the future when time was damaged, and had travelled back to fix it. Along the way, a pokemon apparently named Darkrai had attack him and caused him to lose his memory and transform into a pokemon. Strange circumstances, but perhaps such freaky, unimaginable stuff explained why his mind was mostly wiped, but he perfectly remembered his name and species of origin.

After I fed him that theory, he wanted to know about the human world, despite apparently not coming from there. "We don't know that" Jake said "I still could have come from there. all I know is that I was in the future as a human. Perhaps Grovyle knows… Knew…". His face assumed an incredibly depressed expression, and I asked who that was.

"He was my friend before I became a pokemon" Jake explained "When we saved time, we caused our future to disappear. Grovyle won't be around anymore" he said sadly "I should not be here either, but Dialga took pity on me and brought me back.

"Maybe he took pity on Grovyle too" I said, and he smiled faintly. Just like that, I had made a friend. Just like that, I had messed up my entire goal.

_Actually, he will support me throughout the time I am stuck here. He understands. He will not try to stop me. I am safe making friends with him._

That in mind, I allowed myself a smile. The first one in in a while to appear on my lips. A human friend in a pokemon world. "If Palkia can get me home" I began to Jake "would you like to come to the human world?"

He thought about it for a moment, and frowned. "I don't have any memories, and I have made a life here. I don't think it would be fair to my friends". I grimaced. "That's what I fear too. If I make too many connections, the more people will be hurt when I leave. I don't want to do that" I explained. He understood perfectly. The fact that I had made friends with him meant to him that I trusted him to let me leave without issue. Perhaps he would be sad when I left, but no lasting damage would be caused.

Free of sticky berry juices, and better yet, with lighter hearts, we returned to our duties for the day. I had to rest. Jake eventually had to go on a mission with Swampert, and he managed to find several jobs all held at the amp plains. It appeared as though they preferred outlaw missions, but two of the missions they went on today were not. They had to deliver an oran berry to somebody trapped in the oran woods, though apparently they would rather have one delivered instead of picking the millions around them. The other was to rescue a pikachu trapped in the oran woods. They departed quickly, to arrive on time.

As for me, I went back to sleep. Sarah had not even woken up during that ordeal. It was time for me to sleep for a while. Tomorrow, we would discover if I could meet Palkia anytime soon. I hoped I could as soon as possible. Because writing is basically impossible for me, I asked Nincada to give Sarah the message to under no circumstances wake me up. He agreed, and I laid down. On my right side. Groaning, I rolled over to my left and shredded the bed in the process. My hatred for my new form increased every time I tried to sleep, and lessened every time I could exhibit strength. I closed my eyes and fell asleep faster than ever.

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**Hey, guys! How did you enjoy this chapter? Please tell me how you feel about this story so far, including this chapter, through reviews. I appreciate every constructive review I receive, as it helps me improve my work so much. Thank you for reading my story. **

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	17. Chapter Seventeen: Spacial Rift

**Jango: Hey, Everybody! Jango here. Don't have much to say, so ill just tell you to read on! Most of what i want to say include spoilers anyway. And we all know what will happen to me. Well, you don't, but whatever! Enjoy the chapter. **

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Chapter 17: Spacial Rift

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I was with Caleb, and we were sitting together. He was laughing at a joke I made. I don't remember making the joke. I was just looking at him and his smile. His armor was not there, and the longer fur on his chest was smooth and clean. He looked even more awesome without the armor on. His laugh was real and full of life. Seeing this, I glanced around at the terrain. A field spread out from the tree we were sitting under. Nothing but grass in every direction. No mountains loomed in the distance. It was devoid of form.

It was a dream. A fake. I knew it was. I always did. It was always the same dream. A hopeless future that could never happen, yet I kept hoping. I kept making myself believe that it was possible. Dark clouds appeared in my dream, reacting to my negativity. Caleb looked at me, his laughter gone, his eyes no longer soft and trusting. "You know this has to end, right?" he asked me. The dream began to fade. "I know" I answered "but I can't let it. I can't". Everything faded to black.

As my eyes opened, back in the real world, I wanted to cry. I was fighting a hopeless battle for no reason, and yet I could not stop myself. Why, why did I fall in love with the one person who would not rest until he left? Caleb would look at me in that strangely endearing way, and give me a complicated answer. He would not hesitate, he would not lie to me. He was the most truthful person I had ever met. Yet I would try again and again to make him want to stay because I could not stop myself. What was driving me?

Caleb was sleeping in a torn up bed of hay, the smile he only wore when sleeping fixed on his face. If I viewed him like that, I could pretend that he was the Caleb in my dream. The one laughing with me and enjoying my company. I wish. A tear then did make it's way across my face. could not really smother it with my paw like other pokemon could with hands. I did my best to bring a paw to my face and try to brush it away. I could barely reach under my eyes.

When I got up, Caleb did not shift. He was really out. I went to go to the main room, and Nincada appeared out of the ground in front of me. "Caleb says not to wake him up under any circumstances" he informed me. I nodded. Why would I wipe that smile off of his face? I walked into the room, which was devoid of pokemon except for that creepy croagunk in the corner with his fancy cauldron and it's purple liquid. He looked at me slowly, and I left quickly. I had not gone much more than a few feet up the ladder when I began to feel physically tired. I guess I had not recovered fully from my attempt at razor wind. The attack was able to hurt rayquaza more than Bastiodon's flash cannon, but it took so much of my energy. Granted, it would probably take out any non-legendary pokemon, but I fell unconscious more from the exhaustion than from the hit I took.

I hauled myself to the next floor somehow, only to come face to face with Mightyena, who had found the wrong time to get in my face. "Sorry" he said as I walked right by him. Machoke shook his head and continued reading the job list. Bastiodon was not there at the moment. "I thought you guys were supposed to be resting, too" I asked Machoke, careful not to address the lovesick puppy behind me. "Preparing for the day we are cleared to go" he grunted, and said nothing more. Mightyena's friends were a bit silent. Come to think of it, Servine's tangela teammates are pretty quiet too. Nincada did not talk too much, though he did so more than the other four. That left me, Servine, Mightyena, and Caleb to talk things out while everyone else basically followed orders.

Mightyena came up to me. His eyes were not so lost in mine as before, strangely. He had hardened up a bit again after sky tower. It had been rough on him. He had grown scary when he got angry. His shadow ball did more damage. He was faster. His anger had scared me, not unlike Caleb's anger. When Caleb got angry, he seemed to change into an entirely different person. Suddenly, instead of a quiet, contemplative person, he became a harsh, impulsive person. He also seemed to be protective of others, mainly me, when he started acting before thinking. I look at him when he is like that and feel a sense of fear, yet I know he is protecting me. Whether he is protecting me from being ridiculed by someone else, or even when he gets angry with me, it feels like he is protecting me.

"You're daydreaming" Mightyena said, startling me "That's a big smile".

I **was** smiling hugely as I thought about Caleb. I shut that down, realizing that Mightyena might misinterpret that. He saw my smile disappear, and grew sad. "Caleb?" he asked. I nodded. "What will you do when he leaves?" Mightyena asked quietly "you're setting yourself up for pain".

"I know…" I said, tears coming to my eyes. Mightyena had the grace not to mention them. "I know, I just can't… I don't know why I can't let him go". Mightyena looked thoughtful. "Before you say anything" I said "I know that Caleb can probably tell me. I am just afraid to ask".

"You don't have to be afraid of anything" MIghtyena said kindly "You have nothing to fear with that flamethrower of yours. Also, you have me". He paused. "And the others, of course" he said quickly, not wanting to get burned.

"Cool it" I told him "how do I 'have you' huh? I've known you for what, a week and a half? Don't get all mushy on me". Nincada surprised the two if us by surfacing. he was looking accusingly at me. "That is completely unfair and you know it" he scolded in a very un-Nincada like way. We were all getting angry easier these days for some reason "Mightyena has a better record that you do in this situation". Mightyena looked gratefully down at the guy, while I glared at him. I forced myself to calm down. "I'm sorry, Mightyena" I said "i don't know why i'm so angry".

"I was getting angry for little reason back in the tower" Mightyena remembered. Nincada gave a weird look at nobody in particular. "I was just shouting at you, wasn't i, Sarah. I'm sorry".

"I think we're all tired" I offered "Let's calm down".

"I have not been able to calm down for a while" MIghtyena said "It's like something is keeping me angry, like a bad dream that I did not fully forget". We looked at him, not really understanding. Nincada looked worried about it. Mightyena certainly had some problems on our last trip. What was going on with him? "a bad dream?" I asked skeptically. He shook his head. "I just… can't talk about it. I'm sorry".

He walked away. Using his claws, he got himself up the ladder and out of sight. Machoke watched him go, pulled off two jobs, and climbed after his team leader. Me and Nincada just stood there. "What is going on?" I asked.

"I don't know" Nincada answered.

Jake's POV

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Swampert asked me. The truth was I was not sure. It could either be received well or poorly by Caleb. We had been waiting for a while. Wigglytuff had told Caleb when he woke up this morning that Lapras could take them to the spacial rift. He would appear at this beach. The beach between the guild and beach cave. We hid behind some foliage away from the beach. We could see fine, but others should not know we were here. Lapras appeared on the horizon.

"I think we're fine" I whispered to Swampert. He was always one to worry about a plan, though his size and form did not convey that message. Lapras waited at the shoreline, ready to take the team of three to the spacial rift. Then, Caleb and Sarah walked up. Caleb was in full gear, including the freaky magic sword, and Sarah had Nincada on her back. They strode to Lapras and began to talk to them. My raichu ears twitched as I listened in.

"You must be Lapras" Caleb said "I am Caleb, along with Sarah and Nincada. I believe that Wigglytuff has arranged for our passage to the spacial rift". Lapras looked at him with something resembling respect. Caleb seemed to have that way with people, showing his authority in the manner of which he speaks. When I get over my fear of him I should come to respect him too. Until that vision comes to pass…

I remembered the scene. The feral roar of a monster ringing in my ears. A giant shadow silhouette in between a an unseen whimpering pokemon and the exit. The growl from the beast made the ground shake, and then the image shattered, leaving only a female voice to yell out: "WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!? CALEB!". a few moments had passed before another silent image appeared. It was the outline of an absol before a shimmering pink tear in the air. It looked like a portal, and I had known it was Caleb.

The vision had then disappeared. I had no idea what the monster was, or what Caleb had to do with it. That was the problem with visions like this. There was no reason to even believe the scene and the scream had anything to do with each other, and even the sentence could have been from two different scenarios put together. I was afraid of what would happen, and all I knew was that it involved Caleb. That's all. Why did I lie to Caleb? Because I had no idea what the other images and sounds were. It all scared me, and I had no reason to believe that I could trust it. It was probably true, but one time I had a dimensional scream that was inaccurate somewhat. I worried that I might misinform him, get his hopes up.

Oh and one more thing: The burn on Caleb's leg the other day matched the coloring of the marks covering the ground around the scene. I had no idea what it was. Neither did Caleb. Nobody knew what would happen, but the fear was there. It would be there until the events come to pass. The monster scene could even have come from the past.

I calmed myself with these thoughts as I tried to listen to the remaining conversation between Caleb and Lapras. Lapras was intrigued by Caleb's manner of speech, considering how professional it was. We all wondered every day he was here about that. Lapras apparently was satisfied with the proceedings, because he turned around and backed up so that the team could easily board him. They began to, and thats when I whispered "Let's do it".

"You aren't leaving without us, are you?" a voice called out.

I frowned. That had not been us.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

Two pokemon came up behind us from somewhere in the beach. How we had not seen them, I would never know. I wanted to check around again using my absol senses, but was there a point?

"'Sup" Mightyena said. Servine walked up as well, smiling slightly. I looked back at Lapras, who seemed slightly amused by my break in authority. I was trying to get out of there quick. Seems we had some more discussion to go through. "You realize that Lapras was probably not planning on taking five" I started, hoping to end the discussion before it began. Lapras was silent through my words. Did Lapras not appreciate me making decisions for her… him?

_Why must so many pokemon around me with high pitched voices turn out to be male? I have embarrassed myself so much in this world. _

"We decided to come along" Mightyena said, straight to the point. Servine then spoke. "You know, keep you out of trouble that seems to follow you around. You have a much better chance of success with us around". "What if Palkia does not appreciate such a large group coming to his land?" I retorted. Servine smirked at that "That's unlikely. That guy must be lonely, sitting in such a place by himself".

"Or" I began "he will be like Rayquaza and obliterate us all with his impressive space controlling abilities, as he is the freaking legendary pokemon of space and such".

"Way to kill the mood, Caleb" Servine teased. I was utterly flabberghasted. Why was Servine not taking this seriously?

"The **mood**!?" I barked. I would say cried out, but the sound that came out of my mouth was definitely a bark. Like a freaking **dog's**. "Do you have any idea what you are saying?! We are about to meet the lord of space and dimensions itself, Palkia! If anything goes wrong, it's over! No chance! My last chance, over! I **have **to take this seriously! I would appreciate it if you would take this seriously as well".

"Lapras, can we come with?" Servine asked.

"Of course!" Lapras said sweetly.

My mouth hung open as I surveyed the scene going on in front of me. "Lapras?"

"They can help you in the spacial rift" Lapras said stubbornly "Only those with proof can enter the hidden land, but the spacial rift hold no restrictions". My mouth was still open a bit, and Servine put a vine under it and snapped it shut for me. I gave up mentally. "Fine" I relented. The two team leaders smiled and prepared to get on Lapras with us.

"Aren't you five forgetting someone?" I heard behind me.

I closed my eyes for a grand total of ten seconds as I realized what was happening. "Wonderful" I muttered sarcastically "are chatot and wigglytuff here too?". "Nope" the voice said behind me "Just me and Swampert".

I sighed again. I did not even turn around. Lapras nodded at me. "I can hold all of them" he informed me. I nodded and climbed on his back. I heard the others follow me. Nincada would not like being so close to water during the trip. The seven of us climbed on, a bit cramped because Swampert was there. I frowned at the two of them, then I frowned at MIghtyena and Servine. "What are your teammates, eh?" I asked.

"The four of them are doing different missions in teams of two" Servine informed me. I sighed one more time.

_Dear Caleb and Sarah… We have begun a journey to the spacial rift. There are more pokemon here than I wanted, but we should manage. This will be difficult. Wish me luck…._

_..._

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

Caleb did not seem too happy about the four of us joining him. In fact, if Sarah and Nincada were not on his team, he would have not wanted them there either. Sarah would be more than a nuicance for him. I wanted to help her, but she would not allow me to. She was just so stubborn. I liked that about her, but right now she was not going to make anything easy. That anger we all seemed to feel when pokemon were around me made things so much worse. That energy in my body must be the reason, because I was certain it was making me angry as well. Things were going to go poorly if I did not handle this energy growing in my body constantly. If I could not talk about it, nothing could be done. I literally could not talk about it, and it only could have been the energy in my body. I still made certain nobody was looking when I shook the energy out, though I tried my hardest not to.

I was not in control of my own body when it came to this energy, and it pained me to no end. Mentally and physically. I winced in pain as the pressure increased. I could not get rid of it cramped on Lapras. Caleb had made certain that Sarah was nowhere near him, and made certain that I was in between him and Sarah. She was not happy in the slightest, and my body was probably cold. "I'm sorry if i'm cold…"

"Right" Sarah muttered, unconvinced of how sorry I was. Anger flared in me, but I shut it down. That infernal energy made me want to attack viciously. I wanted to do otherwise. Sarah was warm, and I felt revitalized by her touch. Absols tend to lack body warmth, but Sarah was different. Furthermore, she used flamethrower on a daily basis, further adding to the natural warmth she possessed. The force in my body roared at me to bite her and attack her. Only my self control kept me from attacking Sarah right then. That and a bit of desperation. I felt strong emotion for her, though I thought it was likely that emotion was not normal. It seemed normal in comparison to Sarah's love for Caleb, but…

_Caleb could tell me what's up. I'll ask him before he goes. _

Now, I was happy to stay by Sarah's side, though she did not look nearly as happy. She stole glances at Caleb every few seconds. When she got tired, we shifted to allow her to sleep. She had woken up early today. We fought sleep as long as we could, because of the slight issue that we really crowded Lapras, and somebody might fall off if we all slept. We took shifts as the day went on.

Lapras was quite the fast swimmer. The water rushed by at impressive speeds. The land was no longer visible. We took shifts in our naps. Mine was third. It was hard to get to sleep with the pain in my chest, but I managed.

_Someday _I promised myself _I will cure myself. I can't today, but someday. _

Jake's POV

As Mightyena was taking his nap, the others filled me in on his condition. He was angry for no reason often, and others nearby have begun to feel the effects of it as of late. They also explained that when Mightyena tried to talk about it, something would stop him. Sometimes he would change the topic, sometimes no sound would leave his mouth. Whatever was the issue, Mightyena could not talk about it. I worried about the guy, and I made a decision.

"Maybe I can find out what's wrong" I suggested. Caleb looked at me. "You mean that dimensional scream thing?" he asked. I nodded. Swampert prepared to catch me as I fell, which would occur immediately after my vision started. I made contact with Mightyena using my long tail. I waited. One second, two seconds. My vision began to dim. The dizzy spell that preceded a dimensional scream. My vision suddenly went pitch black.

It was a cave. Grey scars covered the ground. The scars looked like darkness had infected the ground. It looked like Caleb's burn had. There was a giant dark shape directly in front of my field of view. I could see it clearly this time. A giant black quadruped, with jet black fur and glowing red eyes. Three tails whipped randomly behind it, like they had a mind of their own. The beast roared, showing large white, serrated teeth, and everything went dark. I heard a scream of anguish.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!"

Sarah's voice. The second part I awaited did not come. There was a scream of pain. This one might have been Sarah, but it could have been someone else. I wanted to shudder, to scream, but I was immobile in a vision. Once more I saw the glowing red eyes, but from a different angle. I just wanted the vision to stop. The thing's ears were split and looked badly damaged, with two points each. the body rippled with power. Dark power. What was this thing?

My vision slammed into darkness, and my eyes shot open. Breathing heavily, I looked worriedly at Mightyena. I had made contact with Mightyena, but the scene was almost exactly the same. A big jet black monster with three whipping tails and glowing red eyes and serrated teeth. I shuddered at the thought, but one thing was certain: I had seen the same scene in my vision about Caleb, so that meant both were involved in it. Many of my dimensional screams involved me as well. An exit had been visible, and thinking on it, it looked like a cave entrance. That's all I knew, but it was something. in a cave, a large monster that defied all explanation would attack, and Mightyena and Caleb would be there. I might be there, too. Caleb had nothing to do with the monster itself, it seemed, because that last word was not there.

So I heaved a sigh of relief, even though I knew it would happen eventually. We were all safe for the moment. Well, we were safe apart from being about to enter the spacial rift once more. There were plenty of dangerous pokemon there. With such a massive team, we should be fine. The others stared at me worriedly. Caleb seemed not as concerned as the others, probably because I looked just as afraid as I had when I woke up from the vision about Caleb. Could Caleb be smart enough to figure that I had the same vision?

"We are nearing the spacial rift" Lapras informed us. We looked ahead. The sea did not look so different, but there was a rather obvious black essence in the air that rippled. Lapras stopped. "Looks like we must find a way up on our own" Caleb ventured. Lapras nodded.

"That thing does not look solid" Nincada practically intoned. Caleb grimaced, and then said "Anybody have a way to the top?"

We shook our heads no. Lapras looked at us, twisting her neck to view us. "I am capable of using waterfall" she informed us. Nincada shuddered. Swampert looked at him.

"I can protect you from the attack" Swampert assured Nincada, and picked him up. Swampert's hands could completely encase Nincada's body. The rest of us were ready, except for Caleb, who had never seen this before. Lapras tensed, and the water around us started rippling powerfully. Caleb looked apprehensively at the water. "What are you-?" he asked.

**Fwoosh!**

Water erupted around the whole group. Caleb and Sarah collectively made a noise of terror as we were all blasted straight into the sky. Waterfall is a powerful and painful attack if you get hit by it. This happened to us. The upside is that it was a good way to get airborne. the rushing water subsided after almost a minute, and the pain ceased. The black ripples in the sky solidified into the dark floor that was the spacial rift floor. We collapsed on the edge, most of us other than Servine and Swampert groaning a bit in pain. Mightyena blinked a few times and got up. "Wha-?" he asked groggily, and then sneezed out water.

_Right. We forgot to wake him up first. Oops. _

Mightyena sneezed again, his nose dripping. He wobbled a bit too. I managed not to get lungs full of water because I was awake and prepared. Swampert could breath underwater perfectly, being a water type. Sarah coughed a bit, but Caleb was sneezing his heart out, water spilling from his mouth. All of us were drenched. I whipped my tail a bit to shake water off. I could not have water all over my supercharged tail. That was not a safe thing to leave to chance. It was a bit harder when my tail was rigid and lightning bolt shaped. It had a large bladelike bolt on it now, but I could actually move it around easily now. Being a pikachu was not as easy.

Swampert uncovered Nincada, who jumped over to Sarah immediately. Mightyena and Caleb continued to retch, spewing water. I peered over the edge to see Lapras waiting there. He spoke up immediately. "Shall I stay here and wait?" he asked me. "I don't know how long we will be here" I called back "Palkia was able to get us back last time. You don't have to wait".

"I shall wait anyhow" he answered, as if my answer did not matter to him "for three days I will wait here, and then I will depart. Stay safe". He just stayed there. I mentally shrugged and turned away. Mightyena was recovering, and Caleb was almost prepared to go. Servine was up and ready, and Sarah seemed alright.

Caleb checked the large new pouch on his pack to make certain his sphere was there. The glowing pale sphere was there, exuding its power. It drew Swampert forward a bit. Caleb looked between Swampert and the orb. "Palkia was a dragon and water type" I informed Caleb "maybe the orb increases the power of the two types".

"So Swampert here is entranced by the orb because it holds the power of water?" Caleb wondered, as if this was yet another thing that would never, ever happen in the human world. Maybe it would not. Swampert did seem to be affected by it, like he was in a sort of half stupor when he looked at the thing. "Could i-" he began.

"This thing's safety is of the greatest importance" Caleb interrupted "It should stay with me for now".

"The xatu in this dungeon know confuse ray, I think" I said. The whole group shuddered besides me and Swampert. Did something bad happen?

"It's all your's" Caleb said instantly, without hesitation. "I no longer want it anywhere near me until we are near Palkia". What was that change? Was Caleb confused at some point? I guess the event traumatized him. Everyone else, too apparently.

Swampert gripped the orb in his large hands. No difference could be seen, but I guess it could affect him positively.

"Let's go" Caleb said before walking towards the gaping hole in the black mist. We dived into the dungeon. The instant we did, the floor solidified. the walls appeared as the dungeon took form. It looked freaky, but we had seen it before. That is, me and Swampert. We were still a pikachu and mudkip at that point. We rocked the dungeon before, so this really should be a cakewalk unless the dungeon changed. Apparently, according to Servine, waterfall cave had gotten a change, though. It was likely that having the item needed for it, which was included into the job request. It had turned into a ridiculous array of tricks, including a mirror maze. It sounded like fun, but Caleb would not tell me about it. He had shuddered and shook his head.

Lost in my thoughts, I got brained by the first enemy by foolishly leading the group around a random corner. It was a thunderpunch, courtesy of the electivire waiting right there. Thunderpunches don't do impressive damage to me. Swampert walked in front of the guy. Last time, lightning was dangerous to Swampert, but the ground type Swampert now possessed made electric types useless. The electivire was not exactly the smartest, being a dungeon pokemon and in a trance like the rest. It blasted swampert with an incredible lightning attack that did a grand total of zero damage. He held the orb in one hand and a water pulse in the other hand. The water pulse Swampert is capable of creating tends to be big, but Palkia's orb glowed, and the water pulse immediately doubled in size. Probably in power, too.

The explosion wiped out the electivire easily. It was crazy how much damage it did. The electivire was carried down the hall, and the explosion blasted apart the walls nearby. We looked at the carnage, shocked.

"Let's move on" Caleb said, unfazed. He walked ahead, which was a dire mistake because he stepped on a certain floor colored button.

**BOOM!**

The ground under Caleb promptly exploded. He sailed up at the somewhat high ceiling, crashed into it, and fell right back down. Sarah freaked out, and Caleb himself looked a little startled. When he got up and shook the ashes off, he grimaced. "Traps…" he muttered. he shook his head, and smoke came off of him like a smokescreen. Other than the obvious explosion damage from below, he seemed to be okay.

It was a voltorb trap, doing less damage than an electrode trap. Caleb seemed surprised when mightyena used the term 'weaker' to describe the trap. After a brief moment of watching Sarah fuss over Caleb, making sure he was not hurt too badly, Caleb broke away and trudged on. I think that if we had not followed him he would have continued anyways.

Our next enemy appeared; it was a jolteon. Caleb was rather unconcerned, pulling out that large blade of his. It was rather unwieldy in the narrow corridor, but maybe he could manage.

"Guh!" Caleb barked as the jolteon whizzed forward at the incredible speeds the species is known for. a spark attack was blocked by the crystal sword, which glowed yellow immediately afterwards. I watched in fascination as Caleb struck the now electric attack on the jolteon. Thing is, Jolteon have an ability called volt absorb. The jolteon actually looked healthier after the strike, and just looked at Caleb uncomprehensively. The cute little pokemon and Caleb had a sort of standoff, before Swampert just blasted it with mud shot. Fight over. Caleb was a bit surprised that his attack did nothing.

"Volt absorb" I told him "electricity heals a pokemon with that ability". he blinked and shook his head again. "This world just keeps getting **weirder**" he muttered under his breath. A bit insulting, but maybe that was what he was going for. Any way to keep Sarah away from him, he would take it. He was desperate. I would be as well in that position.

As we walked along, finding stuff in the dungeon and finding staircases, I pondered what Caleb was like as a person. He was secretive, almost dark. He was a dark type, but when I talked to him about it, he told me that humans don't have types. I wondered if I would be like him if I had not lost my memory. Were all humans so serious and focused? What lifestyle led to that?

So we went through that dungeon much faster than the group of nine had gone through sky tower. There had been some problems for those guys, mainly due to a couple things. Mightyena and Servine had whispered to me the details. Caleb get's confused, and what happened was different. Caleb apparently caused a lot of trouble until Rayquaza brutally bashed Caleb and knocked him unconscious. Part of the reason this was so much easier is that Swampert's water powers had nearly doubled in strength because of that orb in his hand. The orb was not just affecting swampert. Sarah's water pulse became much stronger as well. Whenever anybody else used a water type attack, the orb would shine and the attack would double in strength. It was incredible. Palkia's orb was an incredibly useful tool.

We eventually arrived at the room with the kangaskhan rock. Caleb checked it. After taking a few apples out to replace the ones we used, the entire group set our location at the rock and slept. We needed as much energy as we could get if Palkia decided to fight us. My lightning attacks could probably hurt him, and Servine could probably do damage as well. Last time, the thing that made fighting Palkia difficult was that whenever Palkia saw an attack coming, he increased the distance between us with his powers and made the attack never reach him. It was easy for Palkia to shield the front of him.

We all decided to go to sleep here. It was completely safe, after all. A nap was in order. I got tired pretty quick. I waited until Caleb fell asleep to make certain that he actually would, and Servine, MIghtyena, Sarah, and Nincada did the same as I did. When Caleb fell asleep, we all succumbed to sleep as well. When we woke, our next destination was the deepest part of spacial rift.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was going to pretend to sleep and then keep watch, even though I was told that this place was supposed to be safe. The problem was, as soon as my eyes closed, I started drifting off. Sleep took me without my knowledge.

The dream world was as bright as ever. Today, I woke in the bed I had generated for myself, the half human half pokemon bed that I had there. My room was quiet. I stayed there for a bit, hoping that I could have some peace and quiet. There was commotion downstairs, the yowling of excited kids and Riley trying to keep them entertained. I thought they would be elsewhere at the moment, but there were plenty of crashes accompanying the actions of Child Caleb and Sarah downstairs. I heard Riley sigh as he tried to contain the damage. I could fix it, but for now, I needed to relax a bit. I stretched and let out a yawn, the actions mostly instinct I guess. Either that or my memories of how my dog was doing had something to do with it. Considering that I have decent control of my memories, involuntary actions are most likely the product of instinct. How was that an instinct though?

I let it drop. I was hurting my head with that. There were some instincts at play that I hoped beyond hope that I would be rid of the instant I became human again. Suddenly, the door creaked open. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. With my absol sense I saw the kids enter as quietly as they could, with Riley right behind them. He wore a pained expression, like he thought this was irresponsible. The kids loudly snuck up to me. How had they known I had arrived here? They were still poor at sneaking.

"Yahhh!" they cried out as they pounced. I felt them land on me. I just let them jump.

_Geez. They are just like human kids. They act just like the little kids wrestling with their guardian. _

The kids were similar enough to human kids for me to feel a sense of protectiveness around them. Just like I feel around kids back in the human world. Kids before they learn what the world has in store, before reality sets in. Smiling, playful, prepared to accept anything. I adored kids like that. Later in their lives, they would experience the truth about social life and then even later the troubles of economics. They would divide into groups in the social order, either victims or aggressors. They would realized that they were divided into the rich or the poor. The popular or the obscure. That was how things went in my world. It was not so in the pokemon world. It was peaceful except for the outlaws. Outlaws that seemed to be so just because they blindly attacked, and gave no reason for their unlawfulness.

"Caleb, wake up!" my child form said in my ear. I had stopped trying to listen, so it sounded only like a normal human ear getting yelled into. It would have hurt far more if I had been trying to listen. I opened one eye. A red face was filling my vision. "Hi!" Child Sarah said. I closed the eye again. She tilted her head (which I know because my absol senses are tuned to pay attention), and prodded me with a foot. Caleb did so as well.

Riley intervened. "Do you need to rest?"

I yawned in response. It was a cheesy fake yawn, and Riley laughed at me. The kids, however, apparently thought that it was serious. The nudged me with the top of their feet. I did not respond. Inside, I was dying of laughter. Riley was holding back laughter as well, though he was not as good at that as I was. "Caleb?" Child Me whispered uncertainly.

I was ready to drop the ball here. "Gotcha!" I said, flipping over to my feet and dislodging the two of them. Why was I being so playful? I don't know. Caught off guard, the kids tumbled off the bed and onto the floor. I was worried that they were hurt, but they jumped to their feet and looked as happy as ever. I smiled. I was happiest here, where reality was not a problem. This was where a childhood was possible. That was why I found myself being so playful here. There was no reality check here.

So the kids got me and Riley to hang out with them. Me and Riley had another practice session, though it was better labelled as an ass-kicking. Today, I saw how capable Riley was at countering certain things I could do with my capabilities in the dream. Shockwaves in the ground. Distortion waves in the ground, even minor meteor storms. I did my best to freeze, burn, and electrify him. It was when we started with the session, he had an incredible surprise for me.

I generated a massive sphere in front of me, made of pure red energy. This superlazer should have obliterated him, and I expected him to dodge it. What he did instead was put his quarterstaff in the way. I was ready to regenerate the guys body, but I watched the attack slam into the staff and get absorbed by it. The staff glowed red, and he slammed the ground with it. Impressive red energy soared out in all directions, and exploded on contact with me. I was down for the count instantly. Not being able to heal myself for some reason, I weakly looked up at Riley, who was rather impassively standing there. "You can do that?" I asked weakly. He looked surprised. "You did not mean for me to be able to do that?"

"I did not try to do that" I said "well, congratulations. You are stronger than you should be".

He knew that I meant. He knew that I was not insulting him. He smiled. I smiled back, but weakly. My friend went and offered his hand. I looked at the hand with envy, and he apparently realized that I could not exactly grab it. "Oops" Riley said, and proceeded to help me to my feet by grabbing my scruff and horn. When he grabbed my horn, my absol sense became distorted and confusing. I reminded myself not to let myself get grabbed in the horn by an enemy. I staggered a bit, and said "grabbing my horn messes up my senses". He grimaced. "There is just no way to help you, is there?" he asked crossly.

"I suppose not" I said "I can't just heal myself. let me just…"

I imagined the berry that Sarah had given me in the crystal cave. A pile of them showed up in front of me. I really hoped it would work like the last time. If I messed up, this would just be food.

I ate a sitrus berry and felt much better instantly. My wounds disappeared. "Nicely done" Riley complimented. That was the end of that practice session.

We went back to the normal dream world activities. Running, swimming, things I never did just for fun before. It made me happy to do these things. I spent the rest of my sleep at Crater Lake with a good friend, and two young absol that needed entertaining. Swimming became easy. Finally, when it had been several hours, I asked if that book thing had worked at all. Riley said it had worked perfectly. That was good. It also proved beyond a doubt that time did pass in this world. Maybe for the very first time since I came here, and maybe the first time in years, I felt completely, utterly happy. Not a care in the world.

As any good story goes, that was when I began to wake up. Riley nodded, and the children walked over to me in their now habitual goodbye. I gave another smile, this one not so completely without pain, and woke up.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

Caleb was the last to wake up. He was stressing himself out so much, it was impressive that he woke up as soon as he did. The poor guy was obsessed with getting home, and he practically has to fight Sarah to do it. Palkia could provide answers, but Caleb had not accounted for the idea that Palkia may not be able to help him. A slim chance, but Caleb would be in terrible shape if that happened. He may even give up.

That was why I had decided to come to this venture. Caleb would be closer than ever to giving up. Sarah would likely make a move. My job was to stop her. This went unsaid to the others, but the others would likely stare uncomprehensively at the event. Sarah needed to be stopped. Caleb could not make it home like that.

Once Caleb was awake, we began our journey again. No words were necessary, we just continued. Enemies were crushed underfoot. Damage was done. Water pulses were fired. We sweeped the deep spacial rift. It was rather comical. Lunatones were blasted, and sailed into the distance. Pits that led to the ocean were only dump sites for all the useless gravelrocks and spikes and throwing items that nobody uses unless they visit zero island. We tossed all those items into the pits in bundles. That provided more space. This time around, there was no money to be lost, because we had stored it all. All of the treasure we had was held by Kangaskhan and Duskull. A good thing, because in our attempt to get home, we may have lost a ton of the money we found in the sky tower.

I whipped another pokemon into the ground with my vines. It was still awake, but Sarah fixed that with a flamethrower. The pokemon collapsed. Thirty seconds later, another pokemon was taking a nap on the ground. Thirty seconds later, we took another one down. Easy fighting, and only a few of us had to attack at a time. No words were spoken. At no time were any of us even hit by an attack.

We got to the last floor before the dungeon ended. The stairs were there.

"Palkia may be able to sense us when we exit the dungeon" Jake the raichu told Caleb. "It would be best for me to take the orb back, then" Caleb responded. Swampert obediently handed the white sphere towards Caleb, who pulled the flap of the corresponding pocket back so Swampert could put the orb back into the large pocket. "Thank you" Caleb told him. Then, we continued. We continued to discover what would happen to Caleb. This was Caleb's best and maybe only chance. "Let's go" Jake said.

The dungeon was gone, but we continued down a wide corridor that would eventually lead to Palkia's lair. Or home. Or whatever. Let me tell you, this corridor was **long**. We walked maybe for an hour before we noticed something was up. After an entire hour of walking, Caleb suddenly veered towards a wall and inspected the freaky structures sticking out of it. He raised a claw and scratched one. Without another word, he continued. After about five minutes, he did the same thing, and guess what? the scratch mark was there. A spacial distortion. "How did you figure that out?" I asked him.

"I will be completely honest with you" Caleb responded "It was a wild freaking guess".

We had a good laugh about that, and Caleb grimaced when we did. He had not meant it as a joke, it seemed. My laughter died when I figured that out, but the others just laughed on. I looked at him sympathetically. His expression towards me said _thank you_.

He struggled to take Palkia's sphere out of the bag. When it came out, it hit the floor and rolled a bit. Caleb stopped it with a foot. It shone brightly, and we watched the walls change. They shifted and blurred by us like we were speeding down the hall. It went on for some time, but the message was clear; Palkia's sphere could solve spatial distortions. l watched the walls vanish to be replaced by walls further back. We had escaped.

The new room had one exit: a large double door that rivaled Palkia's size. It must have been the entrance to his home. This may count as his home now. "I see Palkia has taken a few ideas from human television series ideas. Not to mention medieval times" Caleb commented, as if we would know what that meant. "The entrance never had a doorway last time" Jake remembered "It was just a gap in the wall".

"Maybe the inside is decorated, too" Caleb muttered flatly. He struggled to put the sphere back in the bag until I wrapped it in vines and placed it in. He grimaced again, and then said thank you with his eyes again. He walked to the intricate golden doors, and with difficulty, pushed them open. Once they began to move, they slowly swung all the way until they slammed into the walls with an incredibly obvious **BOOM**. We walked into the place. It seemed to be the regular distorted black stone, but gold lined it in patterns. Foot wide stretches of gold made an intricate pattern that centralized around a giant, glowing pink pearl-like object that made up a lot of the floor. The light was brilliant, beautiful. It certainly was **decorated**, and we looked in awe at the sight. By we, I meant most of us besides Caleb, who was focused on his task. I wondered if he had a plan.

We would find out in a few minutes.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I moved directly in front of the large fancy pearl. I had every reason to believe Palkia would land there. From the noises of surprise coming from Jake's somewhat squeaky mouse voice and Swampert's rumbling, This room had probably been bland before. The gold, I had to admit, was a nice touch. It was an impressive room. one could guess that something ancient and powerful lived there. Maybe that was the pressure in the air. The seven of us just waited for a minute. Two minutes until eventually:

"**Why do you intrude?**" a powerful, resonating voice roared through the chamber, and a rumbling began in the room. The voice, however, did not sound angry. It was just loud. Jake had told us that Palkia was very angry when they met him. Was this Palkia?

"**You have not answered me**" Palkia said from an unseen location "**What is your business in my home?**" I hesitated for a moment, and then stepped forward.

"I am Caleb" I began "I was previously a human, turned into an absol upon being thrust into this world. When I learned of you, Palkia, I believed that There was a way back to my world. I have found my way to you through many journeys and pain, and only sheer luck allows me to know of your existence at all. What I request is a way home, if you can provide it. Please, Palkia. I must get home to the human world".

After I finished my monologue, a few seconds of silence passed. Then, points of light appeared and surrounded the pearl-like part of the floor. The increased in number and grew in size, the orbs of yellow light coming closer to the center of mass as they grew, gathering into a giant growing light. At least, I thought is was big now. It was about half the size of the pearl in the floor, and it completely dwarfed me. It still grew. The massive light only stopped gathering together when it almost completely filled the space above the pearl. I looked up at it, wondering just what Palkia actually looked like. I will admit, I was curious.

The light surprised us all by flashing brilliantly, a light that would have blinded any human but only left me blinking and trying to rub them. The orb was gone, replaced with a giant white and... pink dragon. Seriously, this dragon managed to make pink look absolutely deadly, on the contrary to Sarah, whose coloration made her look cute.

I mentally slapped myself at that thought.

_Shut up, Caleb. Back to analyzing._

The image on the iron plate did not do Palkia justice at all. The bipedal dragon had vicious looking claws on it's hands/forelegs. Each shoulder was circular in shape, with white and pink marks and a pearl on each. His head was shaped uniquely, with spikes at the base of his jaws and at the top of his head. The spike atop his head ran back like a mane before separating in the back in what looked like large wings. His massive tail swept back and forth as he surveyed me. He was mostly white with one foot wide pink bands and lines around him. His hands/forelegs looked like he had gauntlets on. His wicked claws looked like he could slash through anything he wanted. The claws on his feet were closer together, somewhat like an armored shoe. Then next thing was that he was incredibly massive. He could squish me like a bug if he wanted to. His red eyes studied me, just as my red eyes studied him. He was waiting. he did not have to say it, but his silence conveyed a message.

_Why should I help you? Give me a reason to._

And why would Palkia not be like that? He was basically a deity, and deities would tend to be arrogant, mostly due to their being unmatched in battle.

_Except for Jake and Swampert. They beat him. This battle will be different, though. Jake told me that Palkia was enraged when they battled. Palkia is calm now. He could annihilate us at will. _

"I understand if you have no reason to help me" I said "but I would appreciate beyond anything a way home. That is why I have also brought a gift". I reached back to the strap holding the bag holding the orb, cleverly built so that cutting the strap would bring the bag in front of me. I cut it, and the bag slid down so that it was resting on my neck. I checked on Palkia, who was still studying me. My partners watched as well. I placed my paw into the bag, and with some effort, turned my paw upwards. With some stretching exercises, I may be able to do that with ease, but I did not plan to be here long enough for that. My paw facing upwards, I slid my paw under the orb and lifted it out carefully. the bag collapsed into a pile of material, and I set the orb back down on the pile of cloth. It looked like an offering to some god. I guess technically, it was. This dragon was basically a deity.

Palkia could not maintain his composure. I had surprised him very much. He had one the job of giant awe-inspiring deity, but not even he could retain composure when exposed to his own legendary artifact, offered to him by what he might have seen as a pathetic lower being. On the other hand, I could tell he was not as arrogant as he made himself seem. It was as if he was actually a very different person inside. It was likely he was so much nicer than one would expect. He had an image to uphold, and so he acted like one would expect him to. Right now, that image looked like it was about to shatter, and he was struggling to maintain his composure.

"**My Lustrous Orb**" Palkia rumbled. I almost lost my own composure when I realized that Palkia was not using his mouth to speak. The voice just emanated from the air around him. It was like he was speaking straight into my mind. Telepathy, I think the word was. "**It has been found… You propose I help you in return for my precious treasure?**"

That was not exactly the plan. It made sense, but I was not about to do that. it felt wrong. So, I had set up an idea. I needed Palkia's help, but I was going to let Palkia do it voluntarily.

"The Lustrous Orb is my gift to you" I said, and he recoiled a bit "I am here for two reasons. I give this orb to you, and I ask for your help. I ask you to help me Palkia, but the orb is yours". I stepped back. Palkia took one slow step forward and reached down. His giant hand reluctantly picked up the orb. When he realized I would not stop him, he straightened with the orb in hand. The orb shone like a star in Palkia's hand, and I knew that it would boost Palkia's abilities threefold, if not more. His water and dragon moves, and maybe even any other moves he used would be beyond destructive. Palkia's treasure was returned. Now it was time to see if he would help me.

"**You have returned my orb to me, yet you leave the choice to me to help you**" he rumbled, like it was impossible to believe such unselfishness could occur in lower life forms. "**You show trust, like I have never seen before, and something else. you show the will to be unselfish and true. Little human turned absol, I can indeed find a way to give you a path to your own home**". My heart soared at that, though I kept my expression respectful. Palkia continued. "**There are points in this world that are weak, that can be broken to make paths to other worlds. Each one is specific to another world. Your own placement here was likely the cause of a natural, temporary tear in one such locations. I must find the weakness, and I must make certain that it can lead to your world. I can observe what world you came from. I will not mistake your world for another. One thing you must know, is that this weakness will take time to discover, though I know not how long**".

He meant that he would have to find it first. I nodded gratefully. I could do this. Some more time until I could go home, but I knew I could get home. My only real challenge would be to keep Sarah away, though when the others were around, I could trust them to do so. Sarah would always be there until I left. Until I left, I would have to be extra careful. I was beyond grateful. in fact, I felt like jumping for joy, something I had never done in my life, at least, not that I could recall. I'm sure I did it at some point in early years.

_Anyways…._

"Thank you, Palkia" I said respectfully. Palkia stood there, his awesome power filling the room, making the air feel dense. We began to turn, the others first, and finally, after ten more seconds of viewing the powerful dragon, I began to turn.

"**Wait…**" Palkia rumbled behind me. I halted, and I felt the others behind me stop as well using my absol sense. "**You need not take the lengthy trip home. I shall take you. I recognize you, human raichu. I know where to take you. Approach me**". We complied. I moved slowly, letting the other catch up. We stood under Palkia, having to look straight up to see him. Palkia's pearls on his shoulders gathered light just like the energy that placed him on his dais in the first place. The energy came right out of Palkia's body this time, and the sphere of yellow, blinding light enveloped us, although it was not really blinding this time. The whole time, a noise grew from the energy as Palkia prepared to transport us.

v-v-v-v-v-v-V-V-VVVV**VVVVVVVV****VVVVVVVVV**

With a mighty **SHOOM, **we all shot into the sky, carried by Palkia. I no longer felt as though I had a physical form. We sped away from the room, even though there was no visible exit. We had gone straight through the roof and away. It was impossibly fast, though it was likely because Palkia could make distances longer or shorter. It was over in ten seconds. We found the light vanishing, and the weight of our bodies surprising a bit, I realized that we were in a cavern of sorts. there was a jagged hole that was where a wall should be, showing a brilliant view of the sunset and the ocean. I have not seen very many better views on my world. There was a staircase over in the wall that led up. Vines on one wall concealed a hidden room with some storage. The cave of sorts had some beds, one large, one small. It felt warm, like despite the open wall, something was keeping the heat in.

"Home sweet home" Jake said. Where did they live again? It was them that blasted that one team out of the bluff, right? we were in the cliff itself? This thing was called Sharpedo Bluff, so the head of the pokemon was called a sharpedo. Apparently it was a shark pokemon. The theme tune from 'Jaws' popped into my mind, and I shut it down.

Palkia stood there, hunched over to avoid breaking through the roof. I nodded to him. "I suppose until you contact me, I shall continue with the job I have here" I ventured "thank you for everything you've done".

"**The gratitude is mine**" Palkia rumbled before he turned away. Before he flew off using the same energy, he spoke while turned away. Because it was telepathy, it was perfectly audible. "**I wish you luck on your journey. I will find what we seek with the utmost haste. Good luck**".

With that, he charged up that yellow energy and blasted off. Palkia was gone. We had come out of spacial rift unscathed. It had been the most successful of any endeavor ever. Now, I would return to my duties as the leader of team Edge, until Palkia came to me again. I relaxed. It was out of my hands and into the hands of one of the most capable pokemon out there, the legendary Palkia. I could let it go for the moment, and maybe I can rest. At least, at night.

"Well, that worked out well" Servine offered, trying to spark conversation. A half smile appeared on my face, despite myself. "It sure did" I responded. Most of us smiled at that, but Sarah was instead rather in a depressed state. I let her be. Let Mightyena comfort her. Sarah may feel worse after that, but I would not do so. Today's adventure was over. The next one, less important, would begin.

Tomorrow.

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**Right, then, excellent chapter! I hope you guys enjoyed it. **

**This could have come out yesterday, but for some reason, i could not access the site properly. I bet Jango had something to do with it... **

**I would appreciate reviews and all that if you could. Jango is no help. **

**Jango (in the distance): I hear you!**

**Me: Shut up, Jango. **

**So anyhow, Reviews would be fantastic. If you enjoy the story, and hope to be notified of new updates and chapters and the like, go ahead and follow the story for such notifications. **

**Thank you, all of you, for reading my work. I appreciate all feedback i get. Enjoy the future chapters, dedicated readers!**

**And i am STILL taking character bios for the future. I will continue doing so until i have run out of room. Feel free to fill out the character aspects below and copy paste into a personal email to me. Thank you all, and have an excellent day. **

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

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**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**'Sup, everybody! Jango here. Thought you might want to give this chapter a read, so i left a message for you. I'm not actually here right now, because Hyper has me doing a few things around the house, seeing as i have been making a mess of it while staying here. Hey, it's worth it being able to chat with you guys. Have fun reading the chapter here! Cleaning things up, however, is not my idea of fun. **

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Chapter 18: Everyday Life in a World of Magic

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

We were not really tired enough for sleep, but we needed to try. It was time to sleep after all. We were allowed into the guild by a grumpy loudred, whose voice was a little quieter than usual because he was tired. Chatot was calm enough, though he was like: "Get to bed immediately". We did. It was getting dark, so we did our best to crash. Caleb went to sleep quickly. Sarah had some difficulty sleeping. I myself took some time to sleep, though I would naturally wake up in the middle of the night. It took me some time to fall asleep because I was not exactly tired. Sarah's bad dreams did not make it easy either. She whimpered in her sleep. I felt sorry for her. I had snapped at her last morning, and I have no idea what made me so angry. Caleb was basically guaranteed to get home eventually. It made sense that she would have bad dreams.

When I did fall asleep, I had dreams myself. Dreams that involved Palkia (That guy scared me). Other dreams involving Caleb's sword. Why was that appearing in a nightmare? It was black in the nightmare. where the white point of light that always existed in the center of the large blade, a blood red light existed instead. Red lightning jumped about in the sword, originating from the red light. It looked evil. I hoped I would never see it that way again. Caleb, who was holding it, looked furious, ready to attack. His eyes… They were pure, glowing red. He swung it at me, and the dream shattered. My small eyes shot open, and I was breathing much heavier than was healthy for me.

I tried to push that down. Caleb was not like that. The anger Caleb showed made no sense. Red was the color of anger. The sword was black. It had been a dream. I had to let it go. I was no longer tired, and judging from the amount of moonlight reflecting off of the water, and that the moon was not visible, it looked like it was the middle of the night. I would have awakened around this time anyhow. I settled down and waited for morning.

Sarah woke up first. She was up before Loudred came to wake us up. She looked terrible. She had not had a good night. Her eyes were a bit bloodshot. Loudred walked in fifteen minutes later. He looked at us, and then walked over to Caleb.

"WAKE UP!" Loudred blasted into Caleb's ear. Caleb jolted up, his fur messed up from his sleep. It looked like he had experienced a gust attack from below. he looked groggy, but he came out with us. He pretended not to notice Sarah's lack of fitful rest. I knew why, but it made him look a little cold. We went to the main room. Caleb pretended to sing the little song at the beginning of the day. Sarah's singing was halfhearted. I did my best, but my voice is somewhat quiet at best.

After that ordeal, we arrived at the job board. Caleb looked about on it.

"We should just take one" he reasoned "We aren't strong enough to handle too much".

"That makes sense" Sarah muttered. Caleb ignored her and read through the rescue missions and then the delivery requests. an escort mission was available, but Caleb disregarded it. He pulled down a request that was a rescue mission for a place called beach cave. It was the incredibly short dungeon right on the beach. It was visible from sharpedo bluff. Some silly pidgey had walked in and gotten lost. We took that one and went right out.

One would imagine that walking down to the beach would be easy. We walked down to the crossroads. We walked right by the right turn to treasure town and were about to go down to the beach.

**BOOM!**

We were thrust back by the unexpected attack. When we scrambled up, the rock sitting in the corner of the crossroads area had been blasted apart. In it's place was a staircase leading down. An odd pokemon was spinning near the entrance. It was tan with red spots. It's slow spinning made us all a bit dizzy just watching it. It's eyes and ears were freaky, it's eyes looking like spirals from a distance. It's ears were normal shaped, but the openings in them where sound came in were in the shape of spirals as well. One of the spots was heart shaped, the one under it's left eye. We moved towards it, unprepared for what would happen. "Did you just attack u-?" Caleb began to demand before a shard of rock dropped out of the sky and smacked him on the head, cutting his question off short. His head stayed in the down position where the rock had moved it, apparently drained of the will to move right there. The sheer irony was getting to him, i guessed.

He grumbled a bit while the pokemon in question finally took notice of us. "Oh, hi!" she said "My first customers!"

"Customers?" Caleb asked warily. Sarah looked mad that Caleb had been hurt, despite the rather comical way it had happened.

"Oh, yes! This is the new entrance to my cafe!" The pokemon said in her high pitched voice. "You are welcome to come see it!"

Caleb tried to decline, but I spoke up. "Caleb" I said "we might as well, right?"

He blinked, shook his head to get dust off of it, and eventually, reluctantly said yes. We followed the strange twirling pokemon into the building. There were tables there, and it was rather odd. Two stands were in there, one empty to the left, one on the right operated by two blue pokemon, one tall, one short. The two of them had freaky shapes. They did not speak at this time. The twirling pokemon spun all the way to the empty counter and behind it. She stopped there. We followed her, Caleb much more reluctantly than Sarah, and i was on top of Sarah, so i did not have to approach. "What would you like?" She asked.

"You have forgotten to introduce yourself" Caleb said flatly. I had been thinking the same thing, but i wanted to be nice.

"Oh, dear me! I'm so sorry" she said "My name is Spinda! Welcome to my cafe!" The place was certainly very relaxing. It had a warm atmosphere. Everyone was smiling save me, Sarah, and Caleb of course. "Pleased to meet you" I said politely "What do you do here? And who are your friends?"

She looked at the two blue pokemon behind their counter. "Oh! I forgot to introduce my friends! They are Wynaut and Wobbufett, my partners in the cafe! They run the recycle shop".

"Wynaut come check this service out?" The wynaut asked.

"Woooobuffet!" the wobuffet cried out, holding his rectangular limb to his head in a salute.

Caleb nodded at the two of them, while i said "hi". They were a strange little twosome. Sarah said nothing, just followed us as we moved. I felt so sorry for her, now, but there was nothing i could do that would not make Caleb's life harder. It was a difficult decision to make.

"What do you do here?" Caleb wondered, viewing the different items on the desk. They looked odd, like containers with solid thick bases, and the cup like thing on top had small blades on the bottom. Lids sat next to them. Caleb's eyes flared in recognition, but he did not say a word. Spinda answered: "I can prepare drinks for you all, provided you have the berries or gummis to use for it. No charge, i take the food items and make a drink out of them for you. The taste depends on what you put in".

No charge, and we choose what to put in. Gummis were smaller, so maybe two berries and two gummis would do. I wondered if we had found any gummis on our journeys.

"And your friends?" Caleb asked. "Those two run the recycle shop, where you can trade in items for randomized ones. You can also find yourself receiving prize tickets, which Wobuffet can tell you whether you have won big items" Spinda said, all while spinning on one foot continuously. Whenever she spun, she became the center of attention, and i felt very dizzy. The others could not take their eyes off of Spinda either, and Caleb wobbled a bit. Useful tactics to get people to listen. Spinda would make a good spokesperson.

We watched while Spinda stopped spinning and began to teeter around, moving her legs in some freaky dance while she continued to talk to us. "Would you three like a drink?" she asked.

"Uh, actually, the three of us have a short rescue mission to do" Caleb said, eyes still stuck on Spinda, himself beginning to sway back in forth. Sarah was doing it, too. Caleb continued before Spinda could get upset that her first customers were leaving: "I can promise you that we will return as soon as it is completed". Spinda stopped teetering, and we finally were able to blink rapidly. "Gotcha!" Spinda cheered "See you three in a few hours!"

"You have my word" Caleb promised, and he turned to depart. Sarah followed him. He excited the cafe, and immediately walked towards the beach. Sarah ran to catch up with him.

"She was quite nice" Caleb commented, his first non-business sentence almost all day. Sarah looked even more crestfallen. "Could either of you two take your eyes off her?" He asked.

"Nope" Sarah muttered.

"I could occasionally look away when she paused" i said "you two did not even blink while she spun around".

"I was feeling dizzy as well" Caleb noticed.

"You were swaying back and forth when she was teetering around" i informed him. He blinked, but otherwise did not respond. He had not even noticed.

After a minute, sand touched Caleb's and Sarah's paws. We were on the beach, and the krabbys were blowing bubbles, creating an amazing scene. Caleb gave it a secondary glance, but Sarah was looking at it the entire time. She was probably fantasizing about her and Caleb. That would be the best way to cheer herself up, anyhow. The cave entrance loomed ahead, though that phrasing makes it sound impressive. It was just a hole in the rock, a semicircular opening with sand reaching into it a ways before converting to rock. Holes in the ceiling lit the cavern up well. This thing was a mystery dungeon, though you would not imagine it so. Most venture in and right out without knowing it. Somehow, a pidgey had gotten trapped in there. Somehow.

We walked right in without any sort of hesitation. Occasionally a shellos or corsola would jump at us, but we had tangled with far tougher. The attacks practically bounced off of us. Sarah got to take some anger out on them though, even her flamethrower on hit KOing them despite their typing. The rock and water type corsolas were cooked just the same.

The pidgey was on the second floor, so when we got to said second floor, the pidgey was right there in the room, cowering in front of three corsolas. Caleb stepped up, and growled. The corsola became terrified and scattered. The pidgey, unfortunately, was terrified of Caleb. "Go away!" the pidgey cried. The poor young thing. Sarah stepped in front of Caleb. "Don't worry" Sarah said sweetly. It was a good thing Sarah's voice is higher pitched than any other absol, and not nearly as gravelly or scary. "We are here to help you out of here. Would you like to come with us?"

The poor bird pokemon looked fearfully at Caleb and his weaponry and terrifying presence. Sensing that he was making things more difficult, he stepped away and behind Sarah, leaving view. The pidgey relaxed. "Th-thank you…" Pidgey sniffled, coming closer to Sarah "I don't know what i would have done…"

"It's all right. We are here to take you home" Sarah said. "Caleb behind me has the badge to transport you to the guild. Don't be scared, alright? Caleb's less scary than he looks". Caleb stepped forward again, Badge glowing. The pidgey, encouraged by Sarah's kind words, fluttered over. Caleb used the power of the badge to teleport Pidgey away in a flash of yellow light. Without another word, he sent us back as well.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

So the large bird that was similar in coloration to the tiny pidgey gave us our large reward, turned into a small reward by Chatot, who had taken the guild's 90% share. I was fine with it. What use would i have for money anyhow? We had several lifetimes worth in the bank, and i was not planning on living here too much longer anyhow.

_Stop that. I don't know how long Palkia will take. Live in the present. _

We expressed kind grattitude about how the kid was safe. I was a lot happier about it than i showed, but i had to be the strong silent one for the remainder of my stay here. After that, we had a promise to keep.

"We meet again, Spinda" i said as we walked silently to the desk. Spinda just appeared out from behind the desk, like she had just appeared. The objects were still there. They were blenders. Not exactly like human brand blenders, but so similar i could practically see one on my counter. "You three! Hi!" Spinda practically shouted "I was not expecting you three so soon! You were gone maybe an hour!"

"Beach cave is just about the closest mystery dungeon to the guild, and it's short" i said. She looked up at me. I could not see her eyes move around, because all i saw were two spiral patterns, one on top of a heart shaped spot. Her other spots were round, though two near the base of her ear connected and made sort of a filled in '8'.

"Ah, yes, that cave" Spinda said slowly "filled with corsola and shellos, yes?"

"That is correct" i conceded "So how does this drink system work? I have brought some supplies". The truth was that the three of us had come up with ideas for our choices of drinks already.

"Three food items go into this" Spinda informed, placing her hand/paw on the blender "then i mix them up into a drink!"

_That simple, huh?_

I looked for the bag hanging on my bag with the rest that contained whatever i knew i would use in one specific day. There were three small pouches in there that contained the three food items each.

_Too many bags. Too… Many…_

I found them. The three bags were placed in front of Spinda, one at a time because, once again, i am a quadruped and must use my mouth. Out of the first pouch came a pecha berry and two black gummis, the ones flavored like chocolate, were mine. Sarah had chosen an apple and an oran berry, as well as a banana from the harvest we had done (We requested one, though Chimecho was not too happy about it). Nincada's choice was two brown gummis for the ground types, and a lime green gummi for the bug types. They were not so big, but i don't know how much he wanted anyhow.

Spinda took the sets of threes into three different blenders. When she did so, the berries and gummis suddenly became the same size!

"What the-?!" i exclaimed, looking at the grown and shrunk foods. The banana was smaller, and the apple had shrunk a bit. Every gummi had conformed to the size of the oran berry. The pecha berry had grown as well, to my delight. I still had not a clue as to what i was looking at, but…

"You haven't seen anything like this?" Spinda asked curiously. I shook my head no. She seemed taken aback. "Well," Spinda explained "It's a passive ability placed on the device that distorts the size of the food, of course!". This was not helpful to me in the slightest. "I apologize, but i do not really understand the concept of magic".

She glanced at me like i was crazy, which made me imagine that i should know stuff about magic. "Magic takes several forms…" she began, like she was talking to a student "passive, which can be applied to inanimate objects, like your own treasure bag, active, which involves actual spells and enchantments, commonly used for combat. Active magic can only be efficiently used by certain pokemon. The delphox line comes to mind when t comes to active magic. Passive magic is also only commonly used by certain species as well, when it comes to enchanting things. Spinda's like me can do it with some effort. I believe some other pokemon can as well, though passive magic is a far more obscure concept".

I put that to memory, promising myself that despite my pitiful short term memory, i would memorize this potentially lifesaving information. I did not need a 'delphox' or whatever cursing me. I nodded. Spinda continued.

"All pokemon have at least one ability" she said "that is the only known form of passive magic that can affect living sentient creatures. The power is always active, and is not controlled by the pokemon themselves. Because i can see this power, I can tell you that both of you absol have Super Luck, that causes your attacks to every so often change trajectory on it's own and home in on the target, aiming for weak spots. Some attacks can do that anyhow, like night slash, shadow claw, psycho cut and others, so using those attacks make you very likely for the ability to activate for you. Would you like me to make these drinks for you now?"

_Mightyena's 'Moxie' for example. That worked out well for him. _

Useful information. But Spinda had changed topics on me. "Yes, please" i said, and Spinda smiled and jumped to get the job done. The sudden, and slightly scary seriousness she had expressed when talking about freaky magic abilities was completely gone, and she was back to the spinning, teetering happy go lucky pokemon she already was. Her sudden unexplained seriousness was similar to Wigglytuff's now that i thought about it. Part of her own passive magic must be what was making us watch her while she danced. The blenders whirred in our ears, and occasionally she would do something with them, but we could not look at what she was doing, only at her because she would not stop **moving**.

Thankfully, it was over in about five minutes. We blinked away the effect of keeping our eyes open for five minutes. Spinda poured the different liquids into cylindrical glasses, filling them perfectly to about an inch from the top, probably because of that freaky magic in the blenders. The one she gave me was dark brown, like a chocolate shake. It even looked like a chocolate shake. Some pink areas were visible, meshed into the chocolate colored liquid. Two of my favorite flavors mixed into a shake. Sarah's was a mix of colors, and Nincada's drink was a swirl of green and brown. Sarah's drink was like a smoothie, and Nincada's was more liquidy like a soda.

I wondered how we were to get it to the table, and Spinda noticed the issue. She grabbed a tray from below, and put the drinks on it like a waitress. She carried them over, still spinning and teetering but not losing a single drop somehow. The fact remains was that she helped us poor quadrupeds get the drinks to the table. She set them down.

"Thank you very much" i thanked Spinda, who beamed at me. One more obstacle was in the way (of course), and that was how we were to drink it. Sarah solved that one for me. she grabbed the edge of the drink with her mouth, and just lifted it up a bit to let the drink pour into her mouth. After a moment, she set it back down again and swallowed. She brightened immediately. "This is amazing!" she exclaimed. The drink had shaken her out of that glum she had been in all day in a single sip. Seeing this, Nincada worked to get his into his small mouth without difficulty. It took him time, but he got a small sip of the large drink in. He made a sound of contentment. My team looked at me, and i felt Spinda's look in my back. I took my own sip of the liquid, copying Sarah.

The taste was as i expected, and so much better. It was like a strawberry-chocolate shake, but the strawberries were perfect and super sweet, not to mention beyond tasty. The chocolate part of the shake felt thicker, creating a fudge-like feel when i swallowed it. I had said pecha berries were my favorite, but this was truly the best thing i could have. It took two black gummis, which apparently are rarer than most dungeon foods, but it was **so **worth it.

_Look at me, thinking in terms like that. I'm going mental just drinking this fantastic beverage. I should calm down. _

Despite my attempts to shut down, i could not stop the hum of contentment from exiting my mouth. The others grinned as they watched me struggle to maintain my composure, and i failed. Smiling, i took another drink.

So that's how the next few hours had gone. We drank the shake, the smoothie, and the soda down over time, and while Nincada was finishing his ever so slowly, we chatted with the others in there. Spinda did not go serious again, and she seemed to have a similar yet more focused version of Wigglytuff's demeanor. Wynaut kept using the term 'wynaut' when she spoke, making a pun out of her name and the phrase. Wobuffet did not contribute to the conversation much, considering he only said 'Wobuffet'. Otherwise, the conversation was very informative and filled with friendly relations. I should not be doing this at all, but it was the polite thing to do.

Eventually, the time came to leave. Nincada finished his drink, Spinda gathered the dishes and put them away somewhere, and we said our goodbyes and departed. The sun was nearly setting. Sarah suggested viewing the sunset together, but that was a way of saying **date**. I refused the offer, and we went back to the guild.

Chatot was waiting for us. "You two did not have trouble in beach cave did you?" he asked, with a laugh already on his chest if we said yes. "No" i said flatly "almost got blown up, but otherwise, we're fine. Spinda opened a cafe down near the water hole, by the way".

He looked confused. "Spinda?" he asked.

"Yes, Spinda" i confirmed "Opened a store right at the crossroads. Excellent place".

"Ooh!" Sunflora shrieked behind us. Sarah jumped a bit, but i had sensed the sunflower pokemon immediately. A shame Sarah did not remember to do that. Nincada was also a bit surprised. "A new place, you say?" Sunflora exclaimed "Eek! I must see it!"

Sunflora immediately ran to the others, and told them all about it. That had gone better than i planned. I fully intended on getting the nice Spinda a horde of new customers quickly. I knew i would visit that place often. Chatot, however, fluttered in front of the group, which was very brave considering he could have been trampled. "It is nearly dinnertime!" he exclaimed "Then it's off to bed with all of you! You may visit this place tomorrow!"

"Awwwwww…" the crowd complained. I gave some credit to Chatot for his quick decision. I could have waited for a bit before chatting about it out loud. Chatot gave me a withering look that said _Thanks for nothing_. I'm certain that it was meant to not be conveyed so easily.

"I apologize, Chatot" i apologized as i walked forward. He only nodded. Perhaps he was a bit shell shocked at the near miss. I then scolded myself on my poor choice of words. Shell shocked was no longer a medical term. It had been replaced by 'combat stress reaction'. Not as catchy as shell shock, but it was proper.

_Moving on. _

Chimecho quieted the whiny crowd by announcing dinner, and then **Chimecho **almost got trampled. Chatot and i winced simultaneously. "Poor Chimecho, she has to deal with that every single day, huh?". "Certainly more than i have" Chatot said, nodding. I nodded back at him, and then walked over to the dining hall. I walked past Chimecho, who practically whimpered "thanks". I felt sorry for her. I nodded once more, and walked into dinner with Chatot. I walked to the other end of the table, positioning myself at the bowl of the last of the bananas and oran berries and pecha berries and a few cheri berries. I was not so hungry, having drank a filling and healthy shake, but i could manage a full belly. It has been a long time since i last ignored the concept of moderation.

I ate past the point of having a full belly for the first time in a while. Even thanksgiving dinner and easter brunch i had kept myself from eating so much. Things were just so carefree in this world, and it was affecting me. The pecha berries in there made it difficult to stop anyhow. I ate slower than the others, but not so slow compared to my first days here. The others only had to wait a few minutes for me. After that, Chatot sent us off to bed. I considered taking a shower in that impossible **magic **waterfall room, but i would soak my bed if i got wet now.

I went to our room with my team, and Sarah went to sleep. I viewed the last of the sunlight through my window before getting to bed myself, finally laying down on my left side first. Maybe the bedding would not be shredded when i woke this time.

Just maybe.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I had more nightmares last night.

They always started out nice. Me talking with Caleb, Chasing Caleb, ETC. After a few minutes of this, the dream would turn into a nightmare. Sometimes Caleb became that feral confused pokemon he had been in the sky tower and attacked me. Sometimes the dream reverted to him leaving, though i could not see how in the dream. Sometimes, he attacked me without the attributes of his confused self. Whenever he turned bad in my dreams, his sword turned black with red lightning in it. It was terrifying sometimes, the way he attacked. Sinking his teeth into my shoulder, tossing me, using an attack on me, sometimes all in one scene. He terrified me like this, but when i awoke, he was the same one that i love.

_What do i do?_

My nightmares were irrational, i knew. Caleb would not attack me.

_Why do i feel dread?_

Caleb could not have the heart to attack me.

_What scares me? A few nightmares? I'm stronger than this. Better than this. _

But even as i thought those words, pain washed over me emotionally. It was because i knew that i was not stronger than that. I was not better than that. Yet i would not stop, because i could not. I did not know why, and i could not bring myself to ask Caleb. It hurt so much to be at this standstill. I wanted to cry. Again. I had turned into a real crybaby lately. I was supposed to be the strong, powerful teammate with the fire and the drive to keep going. I was not that person. I did not know who i was anymore. I knew Caleb better than i knew myself.

We were now about to choose a mission, and Jake was there without Swampert. Servine had apparently already left, and MIghtyena was at the outlaw board with Jake. Swampert was having a chat with Bastiodon near the other job board, and Machoke was minding his own business in a corner of the room, uninterested.

Caleb had gone to chat with his friends, leaving me and Nincada to pretend to be useful. Caleb would choose a mission while he was over there, unless he wanted to avoid outlaw missions. I did not feel like talking to anybody at all. Nincada saw my uneasiness, and jumped off to burrow underground. Maybe he was going to talk to Diglett. Or Dugtrio. Or both. Whatever.

Jake, Mightyena and Caleb spoke about the missions on the board, and i tuned in, though the surrounding sound was very disorienting. They were talking about which missions were best for the level our team was at. They discussed my variety of capabilities and how they would work against certain outlaws. Caleb's own capabilities were not worth discussion, i guess. Nincada was mentioned, how his bug type and ground type attacks made the entire team very 'versatile' in combat. I don't even know what 'versatile' means. The three of them understood it, though. Caleb was the central source of proper grammar after all, not to mention the voice of reason. Mightyena understood combat terms, obviously, and Jake knew it… Somehow.

Nincada and Dugtrio appeared out of the ground near machoke, giving the muscle covered pokemon quite a scare, and began talking about something else i did not bother to listen to. Diglett and Loudred had an exchange about a visitor, that turned out to be a marill. Jake exclaimed when he saw the blue mouse pokemon: "Hey, Marill! How are you and Azurill?"

"We are doing fine" the marill said. He was very happy looking. "I just came to pay you a visit, Jake. Azurill is worried that you are in good health. You know how she is about you, you having saved her life and all. It had quite the effect on her young mind".

That had been a mouthful, but Jake had followed every word. "I am doing well" he said simply "Azurill is being a handfull?".

"Not so much to me" Marill conceded "But she is very worried about you all the time". Jake had a child admirer that had their life saved? "Perhaps she will come out of it eventually" Jake muttered uncertainly. Swampert joined the conversation at that point, having left Bastiodon to replace Jake in the outlaw conversation still going on. "Hello, Marill" he rumbled, his face becoming a huge smile. Marill laughed when he did so. "I remember when you were so much smaller" she teased "like, four months ago". Swampert looked uncomfortable at that point, rubbing the back of his head. **This **was interesting enough to pay attention to. Jake, unfortunately, sensed his partners discomfort and spoke up to quiet that conflict down. "I hope Azurill will calm down about how i saved her life" he proclaimed "It's not like it was not dangerous, but it was six months ago". Marill nodded sympathetically.

Caleb entered my field of view, unfortunately with Mightyena in tow. He had a request in his mouth, that read: Bully Pancham: Reward: 1000 Poke, Location: Mt. Bristle, Restrictions: None.

"You three should be fine with this one" Mightyena said "It's a Fighting type, which should provide a challenge, but it's a low level outlaw. I am certain you guys can manage".

He broke from his voice of authority to glance at me for a bit. I returned the glare the fool deserved. I expected him to be angry, but he just looked sad, and a little defeated. What was up with that guy?

Caleb put the mission briefing away into his bag along with the map, and we prepared for departure. This was not walk on the beach, we had to go places, so we visited Kangaskhan to exchange items for the trip, and packed some apples. Caleb ordered some things in three small pouches i recognized. Caleb planned on going back to Spinda's afterward. That made my day there. I wanted to keep Caleb here, but i could take a break from worrying to drink another of those amazing drinks. Anything for one of those. Nincada was thinking the same thing, evidently, based on his reaction.

With everything in order, we began the run to Mt. Bristle. The crossroads had lots of pokemon in it, all walking into Spinda's place. Caleb smiled. I think he had done that on purpose, spreading word like that. Spinda might actually be in over her head, despite that she had enough tables for **most** of them. 'Spinda's Cafe' might want to expand. Seeing that, Caleb moved on, in a slightly better mood. The fields awaited us.

The trip was blissfully uneventful. Now as we neared Mt. Bristle, We came up on a kangaskhan rock and linked ourselves to it. "Passive magic, right?" Caleb asked.

"yep" i said.

Mt. Bristle turned out to be so much easier than Mt. Horn. There were rock types that i blasted with water pulse, and spinaraks to burn, flying types and fighting types for Caleb to smash, and poison types for Nincada to blast with dig. The dungeon honestly went by pretty easily.

Pancham showed up in the fifth floor. In fact, he had been waiting in a useless ambush. Caleb saw right through it with his absol sense, and proceeded to… Spring the trap.

"Yaaaahhh!" the small fighting type yelled as he jumped around the corner at Caleb, who proceeded to stand there and look unimpressed. The pancham's fist glowed as he prepared a punch. I was ready to jump in and save Caleb, but there was nothing to worry about. Caleb simply planted a paw on the pancham's chest and pinned him on the ground.

He flailed for a bit, not realizing that Caleb was just looking at him disapprovingly.

_He wants to finish this without a scratch. Without __**anybody **__getting a scratch. Amazing. _

The pancham stopped struggling, and viewed Caleb fearfully. "Let me go!" he said. He tried to sound scary, but he was certainly not. He was a kid. He also looked hurt. Scratches and damage were visible on his body. His eyes showed fear, fear of us.

"Why are you hurt?" Caleb asked quietly, soothingly. The pancham stopped trying to use a strong face and stared at Caleb, which was exactly what me and Nincada were doing. Caleb was acting oddly. Why would he care if the outlaw was hurt?

"I-I…" Pancham stuttered in the face of such strange actions. Caleb frowned "I cannot hear you, Pancham. Who did this to you?"

"Me an' a spearow had a fight…" Pancham said, his eyes looking scared still. Why was Caleb asking these questions?

"A fight with each other? Who attacked first?" Caleb asked. Pancham was hesitant, but Caleb just stared at him until he said "I started it… The spearow insulted me, an' i attacked… His dad got real mad at me, and i ran. I figured i't be hunted, 'cause that spearow was full of lies, so i ran, an' i had bet her dad had put a bounty on me". Pancham sniffled, and my heart broke at his story. Caleb was sympathetic as well.

"There is one choice for us here" he said. Pancham's eyes widened, and he began to struggle. Caleb instead got off of him. Pancham jumped up and backed up a bit. "Relax" Caleb commanded "I will not harm you. Instead, we will take you to the guild, where your story will be weighed with the spearow's. I admit that running makes you look guilty, but i can see the damage on you. Those are claw marks. Come with us".

Pancham hesitated, and then he scowled. "Fine…" he muttered.

"Don't fake that attitude around me" Caleb said "i don't accept that. You do not need to pretend to be somebody else around me". Pancham was startled by Caleb's sudden harshness. Caleb readied his badge, and beckoned Pancham forward. He complied, still a little shocked by the sudden change in Caleb's demeanor.

When we ported home, We popped right into the center of the guild. Chatot was right next to us, and was scared so badly i almost laughed. He spun around, seeing us and the pancham. "Ah, you have the-" he began "Wait, why is this outlaw not bound?!"

"Mostly because he came willingly. I believe a chat is required with the client". Chatot seemed confused, so Caleb clarified: "Pancham was already injured when we found him. He had a story of his own about the scenario. I believed that the client would like to speak with him. The client, the parent of the spearow that was 'attacked' was apparently not there at the moment of the fight. He or she may want to understa-".

"That is not your jurisdiction!" Chatot interrupted, causing Caleb to falter "The pancham is to be turned over to officer Magnezone. Report to him immediately".

Caleb looked like he wanted to argue, but Chatot gave him the evil eye. Caleb blinked, and Pancham whimpered. Caleb was statue still, so i spoke up, trying to relieve Caleb of the stress of the moment, or potential punishment. "Where is Officer Magnezone?" i asked. Chatot moved a wing to gesture towards the outlaw board. "Use the steel energy in your badge so that the badge sends a signal to Officer Magnezone. Do so immediately". Caleb opened his mouth and closed it again. Pancham looked from Chatot to Caleb. Finally, Caleb said "please come with me, Pancham", before walking towards the board. Pancham was obedient, and soon Caleb had summoned this officer guy. I had not met him before, and i wondered who he was.

"I apologize for the difficulty, Pancham" Caleb said "I will try to reason with him, but there may not be anything i can do".

"Thanks for trying…" Pancham said, near tears now. We waited there for about five minutes, the poor small fighting type shivering with fear. I had no idea what happened to outlaws, and Pancham had no idea either. While Nincada began to chat with the poor guy, Me and Caleb waited. Caleb was patient, i was not.

Diglett and Loudred had another exchange, and it appears it was somebody important. I knew instantly from how fast Loudred called the pokemon down here that it must be officer Magnezone. Who was he anyhow?

A large, metal pokemon floated right into the center of the room, followed by two smaller metal pokemon. They all turned mechanically in our direction and stopped. The large one in front had a large metal body, and had weird appendages on the sides and back, looking like the letter 'u'. Each appendage had a red tip and a blue tip. They spun aimlessly, as if they had a mind of their own. The pokemon behind it looked like three pokemon fused together, kind of like a dugtrio, but these were metal spheres with singular eyes and two of those appendages each. The fact that there were three in one meant they had six of the appendages each. Small metal protrusions came out of the tops of the fused pokemon, and i could not recognize the shape.

Caleb frowned looking at them. He recognized them, or something. He was looking at the rotating parts of the pokemon with a confused look on his face. He broke from that when the one in the middle spoke in a freaky, shifting monotone voice. "Y-you have apprehended the outlaw Pancham-m" he said, though nothing on him moved to suggest making noise. Caleb stepped forward then. "Officer Magnezone, i presume?"

"T-that is correct-t" Magnezone said "Y-you have aprehended the outlaw Pancham-m" he repeated.

Caleb chose this time to act on his promise to Pancham. "I have reason to believe that there is more to this story than an attack. This pancham here was wounded before we fought him, and he came with us willingly. He has a story that somewhat contradicts the story we were initially given". Magnezone watched the guy without emotion, which was a bit intimidating, but Caleb was not about to back away. "I would recommend that an investigation of the true events be discovered. A decent way to do so is to interview the spearow, using the information Pancham can give". Magnezone showed no reaction. Caleb took it as permission to continue "Pancham here can give you the details. I turn this Pancham over to you, but i believe that his story is worth hearing".

Magnezone did not move, did not even blink. Caleb did likewise, matching Magnezone's impassiveness. Pancham moved a bit closer to Caleb. Magnezone saw the act of fear, and the attachment to Caleb that seemed prevalent. "V-very well-l" Magnezone intoned "P-Pancham will be taken in for questioning-g. Y-your analysis of the situation has been noticed-d". After that, a bag floated from behind Magnezone and up the Caleb. The bag vanished into thin air, with 1,000 Poke dropping to the floor. "T-this is the bounty on the outlaw's head-d" Magnezone intoned "T-thank you for your effort-t"

Magnezone raised his appendages, and they emitted a light that changed from red to blue several times, and then Pancham was told to follow them as they exited the place. Caleb gave him one more "good luck" before Pancham was led away. I hoped things would turn out well for the little guy.

Maybe, just maybe, a happy ending was possible.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

After the freaky Magnezone led Pancham away, i thought about how surreal the experience had been. The thing had magnets on it, and so did the things behind it. The ones behind Magnezone had Phillips screws on them, like they were human made or something. Perhaps human styles of magnets as well as Philips screws have been inspired by these pokemon. There have been some notable links to the human world, like pokemon understanding and knowing human phrases, and the existence of these mechanical pokemon. The officer had a freaky voice as well. It was like three of him were speaking at once in a monotone, so you heard everything at least twice. It was freaky, and the voice sounded very mechanical.

I hoped that the pancham would be alright. I had vouched for him, and the information that Pancham had already been damaged would help, hopefully.

_Just a basic day in this world of magic and monsters and tricks. The day i get home, i will shower for three hours straight, then i will sleep for maybe three days or something. I want to forget i ever found myself here. _

As soon as i thought it, however, i realized that i did not want to forget this. This was a serious life experience, something that i could not just forget. I had learned things. Forgetting that would do me no good. This place has actually been pretty beneficial to my psych.

_Idiot. Thinking like that will demotivate me on the journey home. Stop thinking positive. _

Anything that could stop me was not to be tolerated, even my own mind. I would not let myself think these things. If i gave up this chance i was being presented, it was over.

_I hope Palkia will find a way out soon. I really, really, hope so. _

One last thing to do today. Sarah, Nincada and i walked our way out of the guild and straight to Spinda's, where we once again enjoyed our drinks. Sarah replaced the banana with a cheri berry, seeing that we had no more bananas left. She still enjoyed the thing. My chocolate pecha shake was beyond excellent, and i almost went to get the materials for seconds, though i regained my self control at the last moment. Spinda was very happy to see us.

"My favorite customers!" she exclaimed, spinning around behind the desk as she was making our drinks "I had way too many customers this morning for the size of this place. Was that you?"

"Maybe…" i said slyly, letting a smirk find it's way onto my face. It was immediately replaced by a little bit of shame, considering i had not asked permission, and Spinda was just getting started on her store, meaning she had not been so prepared. She saw my expression change. "Oh, don't worry!" she said sweetly "I am more than capable of handling so many customers, though i best expand the place and add more tables". I was glad she was alright. I can always tell when people are being sincere anyhow, and i seem to have gotten better since i became an absol. Heightened senses apparently involved character judging, though that made no sense. Perhaps i just had more practice now. That made more sense.

"How are Wynaut and Wobuffet doing?" i asked her, and she smiled at me in a little teddy bear way. "Why, they are doing fine, less busy than me, anyhow, though they got a good workout from it all".

We laughed at that. After i let that laugh out, i viewed the room to judge the amount of pokemon in there. Most of the tables were full, though it seems most had already visited and left for the day. Soon, we would as well. As we finished our drinks, more pokemon came in, and we gave them our table. Team edge was becoming extremely popular, it seemed. First we took down two outlaws without prior knowledge , and then embarked on a month long journey to find treasure, and then were the first to enter this place and make it public within hours. finally, it turned out that that pidgey we saved, her mother pidgeot was a well known pokemon in treasure town, and our popularity skyrocketed.

_Almost a shame i won't be there long enough to enjoy it. _

I mentally slapped myself over and over, expelling the thoughts. The moment Palkia got back to me, my life Should become so much easier.

"It's almost time for dinner, i know we just ate" i told my team. "We should head out".

As we exited, Spinda gave us a wave and gave me specifically another winning smile. Sarah bristled, and i shuddered slightly.

_Not again…_

"Cool it, Spinda's just thankful for me giving her so much business" i told Sarah. I would **not** have a fight between the two. Not acceptable.

she shook it off, realizing i was right. She was tired, so we slowly made our way to the guild. Pokemon there were waiting for dinner, everyone was present. Everyone, that is, but the teams that live elsewhere. We could not have afternoon chats with Jake and MIghtyena and Servine at all. Sarah was happy enough about that, but i had gotten used to chatting with those three.

After dinner, in which everybody ate slowly because they had filling drinks at Spinda's place this afternoon, the pokemon filed into their rooms. We walked with them, somebody accidentally stabbing themselves on my tail because they were moving too quickly, not to mention not paying attention. The goofball…

Sleep came easy enough for me, even though i managed to lay down wrong again. My bed would just be destroyed one of these days. Chimecho was grumbling just the other day about how she constantly had to fix my sliced up bed because i had no time to do it. It was her job to maintain this place, after all.

Sarah woke me up once during the night, whimpering as she had nightmares. I looked at her, and Nincada was watching. I had been brutally interrupted in the middle of a game of hide and seek with Child Me and Child Sarah. I guess i had the best hiding spot ever now. Nincada informed me about how this had happened yesterday as well, i felt bad. Nincada seemed to be holding something back by the way he trailed off when he was telling me what was up, but i let it slide. I needed my sleep after all. After one last glance at Sarah, i went back to sleep and reappeared in the dream world where the kids and Riley had finished sweeping the area. I would remain hidden for a while longer.

I would remain hidden from my own world for a while longer as well.

_Take me home, Palkia._

* * *

**I'm Proud of that chapter! We met a few new characters, and got into depth with a few things. I feel that this chapter has gone very well. I intend to keep up the pace here! This chapter may be shorter than the last two, and i am not certain of the perfect length yet, but I will not falter in my work. Thank you all for reading my chapter. **

**Please review. Tell me what you want to see, what you liked seeing, what you would suggest for improvement. Every bit helps me write a better story. I hope you all enjoyed chapter 18**

**Character bios of course, are still open. Fill-out at the bottom, if you have an idea. Happy reading, everyone!**

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	19. Chapter Nineteen: Inner Training

**Hey, guys! Jango's back. This message is no recording, because i have been more careful with the things around the house. This excludes small things i can misplace of course, and Hyper has no way of blaming me for that. He misplaces them all the time anyway. You should have seen him searching for that one SD card that had nothing on it. I have no idea why he wants that to be around even if he has no use for it. He says he MAY need it, and i laugh at him.**

**Enough of my blathering, though. Have fun reading this chapter!**

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Chapter 19: Inner Training

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

In the dream, Riley wanted a few things. For one thing, the sheaths I remembered the other Riley using caught the saws repeatedly, and this Riley wanted an upgrade. He was cautious about asking me for some reason, though I later had assured him that he did not have to be so cautious around me.

We had just finished another training session, where I painfully discovered that he could absorb some of my less intense attacks I could do in the dream world. The waves along the ground of dream distortion were stopped by Riley's weapons. Fast moving surprise attacks were easily deflected by Riley as he spun the staff around him quickly and the ice daggers shattered uselessly. Yes, I had just created floating daggers behind Riley and attacked my friend with them. I was done treating him like some useless being. He kicked my ass every time I tried.

_Language, Caleb. _

Riley was too good for me to hurt him at all, but when I asked him to try these things with the saws, but they caught on the simple sheaths. Riley spoke: "I have been meaning to ask you… Could i, you know, get some more efficient sheath?

Why was he being so cautious? Was this because I was basically the creator, and he was unwilling to make me angry lest I delete him? That was not about to happen. I instantly turned the simple sheaths built from fire hose into perfectly fitting, blue and gold sheaths. Because the different serrated bits of the blade were bent in alternating directions, I made one side of the sheath wider for them. The looked awesome, so I put another sheath next to the left one that would fit the quarterstaff perfectly, the same colors.

Riley inspected the sheaths, and slid the weapons out of them, placing his beloved quarterstaff in it's own sheath. Each sheath contained a strap that could be pulled over the opening to ensure that the weapons remained in place.

"Thank you, Caleb" he said.

I frowned at his courtesy. We were friends right? I had no intention of becoming a master of any sorts

"You're welcome" I said "By the way, I expect you in no way to treat my like i'm somehow special. It may be a dream, but it does not matter to me. Treat me as if I am a construct like you are. I insist on it. You need not fear me."

He gave me a strange look. "It makes it harder when you talk like a freaking royal. Try chilling out a bit, and you won't give off a 'man in charge' aura".

Well, that was informative. I was thinking about that, and when I refocused, Riley was not there. I tilted my head a bit, and yanked it back up in disgust at my own actions. I walked over to the location, when I felt the blade against my throat. Riley laughed a bit. "if you say so, but you really want me to treat you like I would anyone else?"

He immediately gasped as he was struck by a large tree branch that I had animated from the nearest tree, and the sword was no longer on my neck. Riley was struggling against the giant tree: He can't absorb tree attacks, it seems. He fought, dragging his blades across the bark and shredding the wood pretty well, but he was fighting a tree. Trees tend not to have pain nerves. Riley could have caused a human to bleed out easily with those blades, which may have seemed a little barbaric, but the old Riley enjoyed using those things, and the new one did as well. I had decided to let him use them even though they were about the most scary weapons ever when you think about how you can shred things with them.

Riley was coming at me now, realizing that fighting a tree was useless, and that I was making it come alive. I tried to jump away, and that was when the ass-beating started.

* * *

I groaned in pain for a third freaking time since Riley let up. The tree next to us was basically dismantled, having kept attacking after Riley finished kicking my butt in the fight. He had done plenty of shredding, ripping out my fur plenty of times, and having quite the effect on my skin. Saws, at any rate, are horrifying things to get hurt with. Damaged skin was visible all over me. My fur was not as invulnerable as my skin was. I don't think I have even bled more than a few drops before the wound either closed off or did not reach a blood source. The skin I had was pretty thick, not to mention my permanent winter coat which was very annoying, and slash marks did not bleed much. In fact, The concept of bleeding was almost foreign here. That must mean that if there was an incident where somebody was bleeding, there would be a lot of fear and disgust.

_Stop thinking about blood. I'm even disgusting myself. It's not like it could really happen, right? I likely won't see any real bleeding until I go back home. _

Wow, I was getting **way **off topic. I was so much worse at focusing since I came to the infernal pokemon world.

_I say infernal, but it's honestly much nicer than-_

_I should not waste my breath, complimenting a place I will be leaving._

_But… Why am I so reluctant to give this place no credit?_

_Because focus is something I seem to lose quickly since I came to this place. Perhaps it's the new brain. _

_I shudder at the thought of that, literally having a new brain. It makes my head spin. Metaphorically of course. _

"Caleb?"

_Why do I clarify myself? I'm just talking to myself. _

_Because I think I am finally going insane, and am breaking down from the sheer novelty of being here. I was so calm about it on the outside. I think I am finally going crazy. _

_It's alright, I'm not going crazy. I will be home soon. _

I had said to myself. I gritted my fangs, while mentally gritting my nonexistent human teeth. I wanted very badly just to get home. I was being incredibly impatient, but I felt that I would really go mad if I had to live like this, with **doubts** of all things.

_How dare I let my family and friends down?! I should be ashamed that I even argue of this place's beauty! Beauty is insignificant!_

"Caleb, are you all right?"

I was just a seventeen year old, nearing eighteen now, though my birthday would be pushed back a month now, and we had no specific dates anymore. I don't even know if the month in this world is the same as the ones in my world. I fuelled that fear with the concept that in my world, months either had thirty one days or thirty days, and I had no reason to believe that this crazy place had the same concept of time. The planet itself was probably a different size of something, so the year itself was probably a different amount of days. Furthermore, time just seemed to be out of whack anyway, considering Jake's story about saving the world and disappearing and all.

Now my head hurt. I needed to stop thinking about this right now.

"Caleb!"

"Huh?" I said, coming out of my daze. Riley was there, waving both hands in front of me in a crossing motion, trying to get my attention. I had completely zoned out. He looked quite worried about my health, considering I had not been responding to him. His blue eyes were very observant about how I was not paying attention, and had noticed my eyes refocus.

"Ah, good. You're alright. I worried that i'd hit you on the head too hard".

My confused look made him recoil an inch, and I was **very **confused. "I don't remember any blows raining on my head" I informed him. I really did not. "However" I responded to his look of slight fear for my health "you hit me quite a bit, and I really have not taken inventory of my injuries yet".

He was still worried. I tried to laugh while sitting up straighter, but the laugh turned into a rather high pitched and extremely embarrassing cough. My cough was like a 'yip, yip, yip'. Extremely unbecoming of somebody like me. I don't normally blush, and I think it takes a lot for an absol to do so anyhow, considering Sarah herself has only done so on a few occasions. This, this yipping sound coming out of my mouth as I coughed, much to my embarrassment and Riley's amusement, was plenty to cause a slight heating of my face. Riley became enthralled by the scene in front of him, and began laughing so hysterically I thought he would hurt himself laughing. I was not finding it so funny at all.

_I'm yipping like a freaking puppy dog!_

_Chill out, Caleb. It's not the end of the world. _

_Like. A freaking. Puppy dog. _

_Calm yourself, you are better than that. _

"Hahaha… Caleb?"

_I turned into a dog just then._

_I'm human._

_I've been a dog for a month and a half._

_I'M HUMAN!_

_Not anymore…_

…

_I will be home soon. This nightmare will be over. _

_But what if-_

_Shut up, imaginary me. I'm talking to myself like a freaking loon. _

_I am talking to myself. How demeaning that I would devolve mentally to this. _

_Absolutely demeaning. _

"Caleb? Can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

_I talk to myself now, and I even used my own name doing so earlier. Why am I being destroyed by my situation?_

_I'm stronger than that._

_Far stronger. _

…

_Right?_

"Caleb… Caleb!"

_I do think I am driving myself insane slowly here, but can I make it out before I lose the drive? I need to escape this place._

_Yeah, but what if-_

_Enough with the 'what if', me. I have enough to worry about._

_Like talking to yourself?_

_Exactly. _

_Like-_

_Stop giving me examples!_

Caleb! CALEB!

"What was that?" I asked, startled out of my thoughts yet again. Riley really looked worried now. I mean he thought I was dying or something.

"I assure you i'm fine" I told him. Riley was extremely skeptical. He pulled his quarterstaff out of the sheath I had made him and promptly whacked me on the top of my skull, directly above that weird stone like thing on my forehead. "Don't kid yourself" he told me flatly "There's something up with you, and I intend to figure it out. Don't think you can hide stuff from me. If you have an issue with your mind, like a concussion or you are otherwise hurt, this entire place is in trouble. You have no right to put us in danger".

He was absolutely right. This was my mind. I could already see the place looking different by my inner argument. I was in the depths of a dream that I controlled and if I stopped paying attention to what I was doing, I would mess something up in my silly musings.

"I'm sorry" I said with clarity. The distortions on the dream faded, and Riley glanced about for a bit, before being satisfied with the situation at hand. "I apologize, I have just been occupied with ridiculous doubts".

"Be careful with that, you might hurt yourself" he said, grinning. I felt amused not by his lame joke but at the fact that he was forcing such an attitude.

"Heh, but you may want to do something about that little bit of damage on you".

"What dama- Hurk!"

Riley was tossed away by a sudden attack I launched. Unfortunately, when I did, a wave of pain rushed into my mind, and I collapsed. Riley checked up on me, not really caring about what had just happened. I had taught him, after all, to remain on guard. Now, however, I was hurt pretty bad. I had managed to hurt myself.

Riley tested my forehead. "You will likely have a headache of sorts when you wake up" Riley told me. I knew he had more to say, so I let him continue with his diagnosis. "Don't do anything else tonight, when it comes to controlling the dreams. You'll hurt yourself more that way".

I nodded, which sent another pain into my head, and I winced. Riley saw it. "In fact" he instructed me harshly "you are not to move at all. I'll get you back to your house. Don't you move a muscle".

Then, to my horror, he began to **carry **me, like a human would (you guessed it) carry a puppy.

_Demeaning._

_I hate my life right now, more than I ever had before. _

_This is where my sanity ends, right?_

_Not really, it just feels that way._

_Have fun with that optimism, me. And i'm __**still talking to myself!**_

I did not dare move for a while, because any movement now made my head hurt really bad. Any mental conversation I had with myself that lasted too long hurt too. What had I done to myself just thinking too much? I had damaged myself by doing that. I was thinking about it, which was a mistake, but I could not help analyzing the situation. My body in this dream was it's own construct I supposed, despite the direct link to me. The dream itself was part of my mind. That meant if I got too stressed out, I could negatively affect the things around me and even myself. I could easily hurt myself and the three others living here. I felt incredibly guilty.

Mt head started hurting real bad again, and I groaned a bit. Riley looked down at me worriedly. He squinted at the house, which was directly in front of the sun and blinding him. He almost tripped and was moving slowly. I guess I was not too light compared to the average puppy, but I could not be so heavy as Riley made it seem. I was being made fun of even as Riley tried to get me to a better resting spot. I don't even know why I could not just rest on the ground. Riley had some real bad timing when it came to jokes, it seemed.

My head was not as much in pain, and I noticed that Riley was having trouble watching where he was going when his destination was directly in between the fake dream sun and Riley, who had no way of watching where he was going and might trip. So, I decided to give him some sunglasses. The glasses were one lens, even the bridge was part of it, and the nosepiece was behind that. It looked about as awesome as it could have done, and it made Riley, look particularly serious compared to normal. Because it had appeared right on his eyes, he noticed immediately, and scowled at me.

"That could have hurt you, maybe badly. Don't do anything like that again, Caleb. Wait until you recover" Riley told me, somewhat frustrated now.

I had not heard half of it, mostly because my head suddenly exploded in pain. I started thrashing for a moment, but the action seemed to make stuff worse for me. I settled for making yowling noises of pain as my mind protested the actions I was taking. It seemed if I had a headache, messing with the composition of my dream hurt to no end. Riley checked my forehead, muttering something about how it was a normal temperature.

At least I was not sick in the dream, but I bet my head would be hurting quite a bit when I awoke. A good healing maneuver from Chimecho or Wigglytuff should make me all better, but I needed to take it easy until tomorrow morning.

_Next time I am here, I will not under any circumstances worry about my life in the real world. I promise. _

Riley got me to the house and pushed his way inside. He was ambushed by the kids, and Child Sarah and Child Me were ready to play, but Riley rushed me to my room with the hybrid bed and laid me on it. I felt sick at the moment, though it was because of the pain in my head. The dream kids noticed something was up, and jumped up to check on me. I did my best to rest there. Over time, I would feel better, but if I moved, I would be in pain again. Riley tried to explain the situation, but he did not have any idea what was going on.

Riley was still wearing the sunglasses, and when he went to look in a mirror in a different room (i would not put a mirror in my room for obvious reasons, like how my reflection depressed me a bit, and i now had a slight phobia of them after waterfall cave), he came back with them still on. It seemed he approved. When he went to check on me again, he would push the sunglasses up to his forehead and made certain I was alright. I was not in pain, and I could talk slowly without issue. Eventually, I had enough energy to move into a different position, laying on my stomach instead of my side. The two kids stayed with me, though they heeded Riley's instructions not to jump on me.

So we actually got a decent conversation in instead of being an entertainer. Riley stuck around, acting like a guard or something. I guess I had made him to be a guard. He managed to be a good friend just the same. I was glad he was around here, regardless of how he was not the Riley I once knew. My old friend might be helping try to find me right now, though the search may have been called off at this point. I had been gone for a month and a half after all. There was likely no sign of a struggle, unless my room had been destroyed by the transfer. this was unlikely because of how peacefully I woke up. It was not as if I was forcefully sucked through some spacial rift.

Pain shot through my head again, and I shut down my ponderings. I answered some questions from all three of my dream companions, Riley only really asking me why I was still exerting myself, having seen my mouth twitch as I pretended not to be in pain. Eventually, it came time for me to sleep within my sleep. I muttered "good night", and closed my eyes.

It took mere moments to fall asleep. When I awoke again, everything was pitch black. I thought I was awake, but I was clearly not. What, was this a dream within a dream?

The darkness around me was not so normal. I could see my paws perfectly. I could feel nothing, however, as if I had no nervous system. I felt nothing, though I could see myself fine. I seemed to be floating or something; when I moved, my muscles resisted as if I was pushing something. I could not move at all, and it was like there was not surface for my paws to press on. There was no light, no touch, no smell or hearing. I could only stare at myself; stare at my new body bitterly.

An absol. That was what I was now. Maybe that would change, but for now, I was not even remotely human. It disgusted me that it was I who was stuck here. Maybe steal the life of somebody who **hasn't **spent their life preparing for the future, somebody who **hasn't **set themselves up for success later in life, who **hasn't **prepared for everything to come and would have a chance at a decent life. No, I had to be the one to land here. I had given up any chance at having a fun filled childhood to do so. I had given everything to be successful, and to survive. I had even gone out of my way to help other succeed in their future, even if the did not do the same for themselves. I, the one to do so much to prepare, was the one shipped off to this infernal world and tormented with time consuming rubbish and people who would try to keep me here. Maybe people were helping me. Maybe this world was nice looking, but there was a lot of warmongering involved in the very structure of this society. I could not possibly be a part of it.

_Right?_

I was left to think there, thrashing led to nothing, and it was extremely lonely there. It was just me and my increasing loneliness and insanity as I talked to myself more and more. The complete isolation was the worst form of torture yet. I talked out loud to myself, I think, though I did not hear myself. I may even have sang at some point, some song from the human world. Shamefully, I could not remember the name of it. My old self was dying, replaced by the personality of somebody that I had never known, and nobody else has either. I was fighting the instincts of an absol. Essentially, it was a mental battle between myself and the absol I had become.

_Not to mention creeping philosophy_

No wonder I have been thinking like two people. I feel that I am actually fighting between the person I am supposed to be and the more reckless and distracted being I am becoming. Basically, I was taking that pathetic inner battle and turning it into a pathetic conversation with myself. Does that mean I am insane? Is that natural? I know a bit about psychological aspects of humanity, but I don't know what it means that I now am experiencing thoughts that contribute to two different personalities.

Time was meaningless in this dark void. It was somehow terrifying, yet there was nothing to stress me out there. It was the most peaceful place I have ever seen.

I hated it. I don't know why I hated it. I always enjoyed isolation back in my world, but this was different. I can't even try to explain why it was so, but this isolation was beyond inescapable. I would just have to wait for morning, when Loudred would blow away my eardrums. I might actually welcome that while it lasted if the rest of my dreams were here.

_I would miss the three of them. I hope they are alright. _

_They will be fine._

_But what if-_

_Enough!_

I would just wait there and think things that eventually I got off topic to the point where I was thinking about what kind of clothes I had worn on my seventeenth birthday.

_I literally ran out of relative things to think about. I'm just aimlessly thinking now. _

_I did, didn't i. What's up with that? I used to know how to be quiet. _

_Most certainly, I used to be able to just not do anything, even think. _

I tried to do just that, calming myself to the point where I thought nothing at all, and just kind of sunk into the darkness for who knows how long.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

_Dreams suck…_

I was in that little field again, once again, talking to Caleb. This was a Caleb who did not exist. It was what I wanted to see, nothing more.

This dream did not allow me to control myself this time. This time I watched in the third person as my mind made up beautiful scenarios while I mentally cried from watching them. I wouldn't dare go into the details of a lot of them, because they involved some things that you would not include in the average story. I think my mental image of myself was blushing harder than any absol should be able to thinking about it. Several of them were just talking to Caleb, and him actually answering me and being friendly.

I was forced to watch another lie of Caleb kissing me, before I just could not torment myself any longer. The dream just faded into nothing but pain and sorrow, not even taking a proper visual form. I would have tears streaming out of my eyes when I awoke, I knew perfectly well. Pain was filling my heart constantly, like I was drowning. I wanted to let it just swallow me for a bit, but there was one final effort to be made.

I thought about it seriously, and I felt things change around me. I could not give up, not now. I needed to make my dreams reality. I just had to. I did not care that I was being selfish, and I did not care that it would be insanely difficult. I did not care at all what Caleb thought right now.

_Caleb, you are mine!_

My promise reversed the change in my dream. I would never let him leave. I couldn't. Now, nothing would stop me. Caleb certainly could not. He only avoided me because I would stop him from going home. He was absolutely correct; I would.

_To the best of my abilities, you will not leave my life so soon. Soon, you will realize how you have been lying to yourself!_

My dream reformed the scene of Me and Caleb kissing. Now, I mentally smiled. This would no longer torment me. It would inspire me. I would chase this dream, because it really was all I had left. Caleb would be mine, or nothing was worth anything to me. All of these achievements that we have made or will make would be insignificant to me without Caleb. Without Caleb, I could not find happiness.

I was just certain of it.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

My dreams were extremely realistic, and scared me half to death. Once again, I saw that stupid weapon of Caleb's. This time, it was still harboring that darkness, and that red lightning taking the place of the core of white it normally harbored. It was not on Caleb's back like last time, when Caleb had looked evil and dangerous, this time it was just laying there on a patch of visible ground, making crackling and fizzing noises as the energy was expelled from the crystal.

Suddenly, the crystal sword shattered, yet the energy remained. That energy expanded in a malignant aura, and then sank straight into the ground. The ground turned black and grey, looking dead and destroyed. It was terrifying that it could do that.

_This could be my imagination. That is what dreams are formed of, no? What gives me cause to fear that weapon? Why do these dreams appear now?_

It was my imagination, coming out in the dreams. I had to shut that down immediately, because doubting Caleb was a terrible mistake. Doubt is dangerous in combat situations, and it was not acceptable. I shoved fear away. Fear had no place in the future, where things were uncertain.

_I will not let my dreams control my fear. I will not allow my dreams to corrupt my confidence in Caleb. I won't allow that to happen._

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

The last few nights, the pressure in my body had gotten far worse. My team tells me I writhe in my sleep now, and I can believe it. The reason? My nightmares grow worse every night.

Tonight's nightmare was far worse than normal. I was used to hearing screams of pain and seeing flashes of blood, pokemon hurt, dying. I had never heard of such a thing happening. Pokemon dying always involved reaching the end of the pokemon's respective lifespans. Nobody really knew what death by some other cause looked like, because death was really difficult for pokemon to achieve without dying of old age unless you were really trying, and nobody ever tried. Nobody would.

The scenes I saw every night involved spilt blood, and I saw people hurt. Sometimes they were pokemon I had never met before. Sometimes, and more recently, they were pokemon I have met. Pokemon I have spoken to. The more I knew them, the more detail was shown. It was horrible, and despite my attempts at masculinity, I always awoke shrieking.

There was no doubt whatsoever that the dark energy that has tormented me for so long is the root cause of my nightmares. I knew that I was in serious trouble, but it stopped me from talking about it, and I knew that it would torment me until I got rid of it.

_Maybe it will kill me. _

Now I was scaring myself. I breathed deeply thinking about it. Right now, I was trying to focus on the job for today, but I was in pain again. I let out a soft growl as the infernal pain spiked. Bastiodon gave me a worried look out of the corner of his eye. Every one of the others knew something was up with me, but when I tried to give them a diagnosis, my voice just stopped working.

_The hell is this energy anyway!?_

I was ready for this all to be over. I needed to fix myself immediately. I needed a diagnosis, and I needed a cure. Caleb, that foolish human absol, had no idea what that weapon could do. If this were to happen again, things would be beyond bad. As far as I can tell, I am not the only one suffering from nightmares. I fear that the others are infected with this energy, causing nightmares to happen. Caleb was the only one unaffected. I contemplated for a moment whether Caleb knew exactly what he was doing, and an unnatural rage filled me, courtesy of this stupid darkness.

I shook that off. Caleb had no idea what was going on, that much was certain. Caleb seemed to be well rested for every morning, considering how guild members are woken up before graduation. In fact, when he was walking about the other day, he had been almost satisfied with the current situation.

_I'm glad somebody is having good dreams. _

That did not last too long, however, because Caleb came up the ladder following the noises I had heard down there from the morning cheer. I could certainly agree with Caleb that the morning routine down there was not so fun. in fact, it was demeaning to think about making people sing through their sleep like nothing was wrong. Caleb was slow coming up the ladder, just as I am coming up ladders.

_Being a quadruped must be annoying for Caleb. _

The problem I noticed is that Caleb looked incredibly tired. I mean he looked like he was in pain, and exhausted.

"Nightmares?" I asked Caleb. He looked at me blankly for a moment, which made me think something was up with his head. Caleb was never really blank about anything.

"Headache" Caleb replied.

Headache? Headaches are rare among dark types. Many headaches are caused by psychic attacks, and dark types don't even remotely feel those. Head trauma does not last too long for fast healing pokemon, which many dark types are. Any pokemon hit by a healing maneuver would not suffer a headache for at least a while. Our minds are very tough to break through, even considering our immunity to psychic attacks. Many dark types have pretty tough skulls and bones. Umbreon and mightyena and absol are three examples of this trait. That is partially why it is so effective to tackle down other pokemon.

"A headache" I replied.

"Is that not normal?" Caleb asked, and I felt a surge of impatience

"Of course it's not normal, you…" I muttered before I stopped myself. Caleb blinked before I continued; "I apologize. Please forgive me. It's just that dark types don't normally have very many headaches. Sorry". I had said sorry plenty there, but I wanted to somehow, **somehow** convey that something was wrong. Caleb was very smart, and he got the message, much to my joy.

"Your symptoms are getting worse, Mightyena" Caleb informed me, like I did not know that. Suddenly, I really wanted to change the topic, but it was not my emotions causing that. I shoved it down as best I could, and only felt the pain get stronger.

"You are clearly in pain, Mightyena" Caleb told me. I was so glad that he could pay attention. "You seem to be incapable of talking about it, as though something stops you. I wish I could help you, but I have never seen anything like it".

Of course he hasn't, but I had hoped he could help me. I tried to gesture at the blade on Caleb's back, but I found myself stopping. Geez, this was beyond infuriating. I instead tried to shake out that dark energy to show him what was causing the problem, and maybe he would have made a connection between that and the dark sparks I experienced when I first touched the blade, but nothing happened when I shook myself. The pressure stayed. I would have to be unobserved when it happened.

_Why me?_

Caleb observed my bizarre behavior in silence, clearly thinking about a way to help, but he looked very dismayed that he could not think of anything. The guy was a true friend, something I had not had for very long because I had been so rude and hostile to people before I met Sarah. Sarah, along with Caleb's little mind game, I felt completely changed. I wanted to help people, and was not so concerned with fame, titles or money. It made no sense that such a colossal change would occur, so I decided to ask about that instead.

"Caleb… Why do you think I changed so easily? I don't know why it happened, but now, I see how ridiculous it was for me to do those things and say those things. What changed?" I asked. Caleb was listening well.

"Mightyena, the only thing I can consider is that you were fully capable of such thoughts before" Caleb said kindly "No one is fully exempt from any emotion. An antisocial being can still feel love. A kind, gentle person can still react to betrayal with anger and hatred. People can change as fast as a mystery dungeon can, and all it takes is for someone else to give a little push, whether in the right or the wrong direction. You may not have been so fooled by my game, but you **almost **fell for it, and thinking about it for the first time, you learned so much about what you were doing. You learned that you liked Sarah, and I feel that is what really brought you away from what you used to be. You should be proud, MIghtyena. I feel that I would not so easily change in your place".

I stared at him, thinking things through. He somehow had figured that my change had less to do with his mind game than he originally thought. I wondered about his analysis. Anybody could change, and it only takes the right circumstance, and that circumstance was Sarah. It made sense. I got back to the subject of Caleb's little headache. "What do you think is causing that headache of yours?" I asked.

Caleb started at my change of subject. He was still trying to help me, but he relented about that for the moment. "I was having conflicting thoughts about what to do, and my head started to hurt. It was like I was fighting myself. My thought process was different as a human, Mightyena, and I try to think like I used to. As an absol instead, well… This body has a different brain entirely, as freaky as that sounds. I have been talking to myself lately, as if i'm two different people. I'm driving myself crazy, and now my head hurts when I think about things too much. It hurts".

With that, Caleb winced. I had just asked him to analyze my situation if **that **was what the poor guy was going through? It would scare me to no end knowing that, and it was a freaky idea that he actually had a different brain. "I'm sorry, Caleb" I said. Caleb looked troubled, but he still responded. "You need not worry, Mightyena" he assured me in a voice that was not very reassuring. In fact, Caleb looked like he was in pain. Suddenly, Caleb snapped to attention, realizing what I was doing, near the board. "You are clearly in pain, and you're choosing a **job**!?" Caleb snapped at me. "No, no, **you **need to rest today. I can see how exhausted you are. Look at yourself, you're panting with exhaustion!"

_Some friend…_

_No, he is. Very much. He only has my best interests in mind, even if he can't help me very much. He ignores the pain in his head in the effort to help me, pretending to be fine so that I receive as much aid as I can. _

_But, he has no idea what he is keeping me from. It could be anything._

_Now i'm arguing with myself. Caleb is my friend, and I cannot treat him otherwise. _

But now I realized that I may be arguing with myself, but it was more likely the corrupted part of my emotions that the energy created. I myself was two at the moment, though I was fighting this negative energy, Caleb was truly fighting himself, a battle between his human mind and the mind of an absol that had the same memories. Different instincts, different minds. Caleb's pain and my pain were very similar, but I had pain in the rest of my body as well.

The thing about the whole scenario was that Caleb was absolutely correct. I was panting and tired, and I should not be doing anything today. I waited for Caleb to repeat himself before I answered. I wanted to make sure that resting was the right thing to do. Resting sounded great, but I had a job to do.

Bastiodon startled both of us. "Caleb is right" he intoned "you need rest, Mightyena. Machoke and I will take a job today. You must rest. Caleb nodded in approval. Bastiodon noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye, and viewed Caleb's lack of health as well. "You must do the same" Bastiodon intoned to Caleb.

"Pardon?" Caleb asked, confused. As I had thought, he had given no real thought to his own condition. I frowned at the thought that Caleb would go get himself hurt in that condition. Another problem was that Caleb was getting too used to this life than was good for him. "Getting a little comfortable, are we?"

That snapped Caleb out of it immediately. "No! No, no I can't…" he exclaimed. Now he looked utterly disgusted with himself, the poor guy. He loved this place, I could see that much, but he hated himself. He must have a family, parents, siblings maybe, no wonder he was so angry at himself for becoming so… Happy. Happiness was not good for my friend right now. Right now, if he even allowed himself to be happy for one second, he might start to become happy with this place more and more. We all wanted him to stay, it I am perfectly honest, but there was only one person who would actually stop him, and resist losing him.

_Sarah. _

Sarah would be the biggest obstacle, and to help Caleb get home, I would have to go against her. Sarah would not just let Caleb leave, even if he got so close. The rest of us would have to stop her, maybe forcefully. It hurt to think about it. I don't want to hurt Sarah. I could not. Yet, I could not stop Caleb from leaving. The idea of either made me want to roar with anger. I could never betray a friend, or a love, but I was required to do one of them, and I would help Caleb, because Caleb had earned my loyalty. The decision hurt. I knew Sarah may never recover, and neither would any chance between us.

_I'm so sorry, Sarah. _

_I'm so sorry, me. _

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

Chatot interrupted us all of a sudden, and because my focus was on Mightyena, I had not been paying attention to my absol senses. As it was, me and Mightyena practically jumped right out of our fur.

"You two do not seem well" Chatot proclaimed, making me want to say 'no shit, sherlock'. I did not, of course. Mightyena seemed to want to do the same thing, but I gave him a warning glance. The poor guy had something wrong with him, and it was hurting him, making him aggressive, and somehow, it was keeping him from talking about what was wrong. When we started the conversation, his head had twitched in some direction above me, which was strange enough, and then he had shaken himself like a dog would to get water off of him for apparently no reason. He was trying to tell me something, but I would not dare make any assumptions. It could tell me that the symptoms get better when he shakes himself for some reason, or it could tell me that for all I knew, he had gotten the illness in the water. That certainly made no sense.

So I had no idea what was wrong with Mightyena. I had meant every single thing I said, and I felt the spark of friendship with the guy. Then, I had proceeded to stupidly talk about this place like it was a good thing, leading to positive feelings for this place.

_If Mightyena had not warned me…_

Mightyena was a true friend to me, and it would be even better if he was not somehow sick. His friendship would get me out of this yet.

I shot the bird looking up at us a look, and decided that this was a good chance to keep Mightyena off work today. A slight headache did not have to stop me from being involved in my job, right?

_And why do I care?_

My headache decided to get worse right there, and I winced. Mightyena still looked pained. Chatot noticed, to his credit. "You two are to report to Chimecho before you leave on any missions" Chatot said. My dismay was apparent to them all. "Chatot, Mightyena may need to rest today" I told him. Chatot looked frustrated, and I realized that I had done the same thing as I had done when I had questioned the way the outlaw system works.

"That" Chatot said crossly "is for Chimecho to decide. Now, report to Chimecho".

"Yes, Chatot" I said, chagrined. MIghtyena followed us to where Chimecho was behind a counter in the same room, near the outlaw board. Chimecho greeted us cheerfully until she realized that A: we were in bad shape, and B: Bad Luck Caleb was one of the two talking to her. Seriously, I think she has had enough of my crashing straight into her, or the food supply, or whatever. I have caused Chimecho some stress in the near past.

"Oh, dear, you two don't look so good" Chimecho said, and again the two of us almost snapped at her just like we almost snapped at Chatot. Chimecho tried a heal bell, but long story short, Mightyena was still in pain, and my headache would feel better until she stopped, when it would rush back. It was probably because my thought process was basically me screaming at myself. Chimecho had no idea what was going on.

"That's it!" she exclaimed, and we turned to her, thinking she had come up with a solution, but she was scowling. "Neither of you are going anywhere until I figure out why the heal bell won't work on you. Stay in the guild until I learn a little more. I don't want to hear that you have left on a mission, I don't want to hear that you have been doing something too active. You are allowed to travel to treasure town when I have found out more, but you are not under any circumstances to use Marowak's dojo, nor are you to even **think** of running around. You two are sick, and heal bell is not working. This is serious. **Do**. **Not**. **Run off**".

Whoa, Chimecho was **scary** when she was stern. Even Mightyena flinched every time she opened her mouth there. The little wind chime pokemon was about to confine us to this place so that she could learn a thing or two about what was up with us. I knew what was up with me, but Mightyena would be stuck here if that was the case, unless she gave up on creating a diagnosis.

So Mightyena and I lounged in the guild, somehow finding comfort in a patch of ground without rocks and just laid down there, sitting through the pain, and wondering if our teams were alright. Sarah and Nincada had gotten distracted by loudred while all that went down, so when they discovered what was up, Sarah was very worried. I shied away from her when she tried to check on me, getting up close and personal. Sarah persisted, seeming to have broken out of her attitude recently, and I was forced to get up and back away. Sarah chased me, smiling. Back to square one.

Chimecho saved me. She was **mad**. She looked murderous, honestly, chastising Sarah for messing with her patient and making me run. Generally, she scared the shit out of us.

_Language, Caleb._

_Whatever._

The return of my headache made me just kind of lie back down. Mightyena looked at me, worried. It seemed that while Mightyena was in pain, and within most of his body, when my head hurt my mind was somewhat scrambled. Mightyena was worried about me, and so was Sarah, but not even Sarah was insane enough to defy the new, terrifying Chimecho. Sarah and Nincada left on a mission, and Bastiodon and Machoke left on another one. This left Mightyena and I to discuss things, and discuss things we did.

"Despite my lack of control over the situation, I cannot help but wonder how long Palkia will take to find something" I said.

"I'm certain he is doing his best" Mightyena assured me "Palkia will do as he says he will, I can tell". I guess that Mightyena would know about loyalty. The wolf like pokemon was as loyal as they could come when he had made a friend with somebody. I'm so glad he met us in the first place. Otherwise, he could still be the same person we first met. Once again, I marvelled at how quickly he had changed, but Mightyena had been mostly responsible for that. My mind game was less than perfect, and Mightyena would just have been enraged if he had no feelings for Sarah.

I looked at the guy, who was appraising me as well. What would happen when I left and Sarah made a decision? Would he be happy, or would he fall back into the dark attitude he had constantly exhibited before he got to know Sarah.

"Thank you for your reassurance" I finally said slowly. Mightyena nodded. Chimecho came then, having made absolutely certain that Sarah had not snuck back. She was much more pleasant as she asked questions. I had to explain that something was stopping Mightyena from talking about the cause of his pain, which Mightyena could only nod to, and then I explained to her what I figured was causing my headaches, avoiding any information about how I was human previously. Chimecho found my symptoms to be less severe, and tried many sorts of healing remedies on Mightyena that were used in the extremely rare occasion that a healing technique did not work. Mightyena's pain did not subside whatsoever. He explained that something he could do temporarily dumb the pain down, but like his speech, he could not make himself do it properly unless nobody was watching.

Overhearing that, Chimecho asked him to demonstrate. "Here goes…" Mightyena muttered, before shaking himself like before. Nothing happened. He immediately growled in annoyance, and began to look angry, like the failed attempt had caused an anger issue. My absol senses warned me of the danger rolling off of him. It was an expansive cloud of danger that made me yearn to flee.

_Stupid instincts._

Mightyena was then led into a secluded room by Chimecho, and Chimecho came back. Soon after, Mightyena appeared, looking so much better.

"It worked" he breathed "It will be back by the end of the day, though…"

"We should be able to fix it if we can figure it out" I offered. He looked at me gratefully. Something occurred to me.

"You know what caused it, yes?" I asked. He nodded.

"And whatever it is stops you from telling me".

He nodded again. He could not tell us. I nodded back, and we returned to sitting around and doing nothing. About an hour of talking passed, mostly filler like Mightyena wanting to know more about the human world.

* * *

"What on earth is a car?" Mightyena asked me. He looked so much better than before, in fact the pain was perfectly tolerable. My pain was worse than his was, though I was ignoring it as I thought about the human world. "Cars are vehicles built for basic transportation, because humans are very slow. We build them out of metal, typically mostly iron and aluminum, as well as assorted materials in order to create efficient, or sometimes inefficient vehicles for travel".

Mightyena blinked. "Wha?" he asked. He had not understood a single word that had come out of my mouth. "Humans build and use them to travel quickly from place to place" I clarified. Mightyena looked mystified, but he nodded. I had told the guy a lot of things already, and he had so many questions because many of the words I had used were completely alien to him. "And what do you mean by "Bedsheets?"

"The beds that humans use are in layered pieces that stack on top of one another. A metal base for elevation, a mattress or two that support the weight of the human body, followed by sheets that cover us and preserve warmth while we sleep".

"And Mattresses?"

Thick, large pads with… ah, I believe it's called memory foam. Don't ask me what memory foam is. Just know it's far more comfortable than straw".

"huh… And what on earth is this toothpaste you mentioned?"

Pokemon were oblivious to the conversation, except chimecho, who was keeping an eye on Mightyena while she worked with some of the teams that had not departed yet.

"Social expectations for humanity include keeping our teeth as clean as possible, specifically when doing something more formal. Toothpaste is used to clean teeth effectively. We don't have any oran berries or cheri berries or pecha berries that seem to wash stuff right off of teeth". I told Mightyena.

He nodded almost imperceptibly, and then there were five minutes of silence.

"How are the sunsets there?" he asked finally. What was that about? That question sent straight into right field, where the guy set there was too bored to catch it properly. I blinked, and then stammered a bit.

Uh-um… Well, it depends where you are, I guess. The sky turns different colors depending on the amount of pollution". I stammered. Mightyena looked at me in confusion. "Pollution?" he asked, as if sensing my discomfort about the topic.

"Things like cars and other vehicles, alongside many things that we do unleash fumes into the air, a byproduct of our vehicles and tools, the price of efficiency" I said somewhat bitterly "Over time, the pollution kind of affects the sky. I'm not perfectly certain about the science, but the layers of pollution affect many things, like sunsets and other things. Around cities it is particularly bad. We don't really think too much about it, because we can't exactly walk everywhere. The entire world is connected by the different things we have build, all continents, almost every community is connected by travel lines, and ways to contact each other from afar, and we do it all without so much as a spark of magic. almost everything runs on fuel and releases toxins into the air. The price of having the world know what's up within hours of it happening. The price of being able to travel to the other side of the planet in mere hours to a few days at worst, and all you need is proper identification and enough money in your wallet".

Mightyena's eyes had gone wide as I described the world, interconnected inseparably but with the price of killing the air around us. Thinking about it now, I grew angry about it. This place, it was so clean, beautiful… Perfect.

_No! I cannot think like that. Anything and everything I think about this place weakens my resolve!_

_And yet, I am correct. _

_That means nothing! If I cannot focus…_

_I would end up staying. Would that be so bad?_

_YES! Yes it would be so bad. I have a family to return to. I cannot let them down. It would be betrayal. _

"Caleb?"

_My family probably thinks i'm dead, yeah?_

_Shut up. _

_Or worse, they believe I ran away. _

_SHUT UP!_

"Caleb, are you all right? Is your headache returning?"

_And when exactly is that Palkia guy going to show his mug again? He should be rushing about right-_

_That's enough. Palkia is doing what he can as fast as he can. There is no reason to doubt him._

"Caleb!"

_But what if-_

_I am sick and tired of the phrase 'what if'._

"Caleb, please respond!"

_Gah! My head hurts so much… Pain…_

"Caleb!"

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

**Thump!**

Caleb's head hit the ground. His body had tensed in it's lying position, and his face had contorted in pain, and then he had just knocked himself out. He had spent too much time thinking, I guess.

"Caleb, wake up!" I called to him. Chimecho flew over. "What happened!?" she demanded of me. "I-I guess he just spent too much energy thinking about things" I stammered. Geez, Chimecho was scary when it came to the safety of her patients. I had never seen her that way before today.

_Am I doing that to her?_

The idea that my aura was making even the normally kind Chimecho angry was depressing. I almost wanted to apologize, but she would ask "for what?"

Caleb groaned a bit, before seeming to recover slightly. His head came off of the floor. "Ugh…" he mumbled "That was a mistake…"

"Yeah, it was" I said irritably before I could stop myself. I winced, but Caleb seemed to not notice. Maybe he just understood why I was so angry. Chimecho, however, gave me a death glare, which I longed to return. "Are you alright now, Caleb?" I asked him. He gave a somewhat weak nod.

"And you?" he asked me in return. The pain I had been feeling was slowly dissipating to below normal, probably because of the feelings of friendship I was feeling. "I feel better than normal".

He smiled. "That's good. Very good…" he breathed out heavily when he finished. Chimecho looked worried until Caleb straightened. "Right" he said with clarity "I'm a bit better now".

"If you say so…" Chimecho murmured, still concerned. I would be as well in her position. Chimecho left us to continue talking, and I started to think about the scary things he had said about the environment of his world. Pollution and such. His world apparently also could contact other across the world easily, and travel between the other places within hours or a few days at most. I wondered how. I was almost too scared to ask, because whatever they used to get across the oceans are probably not the best for the sky either. They had messed up the sky itself to make things go faster. According to Caleb, humans were in no way fast. They had to make such ways to travel.

"How do humans get from continent to continent?" I asked. Caleb raised his head a bit from his resting position. "Humans have several modes of travel, often using planes or boats to travel between continents. Cars are for traveling along specified roads" he informed me.

"Boats?" I asked "we have boats. Large structures with sails used for travelling water in large groups, right? They'll be used to bring pokemon in other regions to here for that tournament in about four weeks".

"We have gone a bit further than sails" Caleb told me, and my mind immediately turned to the fact that even ships caused damage to the environment around his home. This all seemed so astronomical, that not even sunsets were available to those poor humans. "We have huge motors and systems to propel them forward, and this makes it so that we are less affected by the weather while in the ocean".

"What about controlling the weather?" I asked. It was a reasonable question, considering we had moves like hail, sandstorm, sunny day and rain dance to control the weather.

"We can't do that" he said sadly "We have to push past the natural limitations because we cannot do anything about them otherwise. Such ways to control the weather are nonexistent". He whipped his head quickly towards me. "You guys **can** control the weather?" he asked. I nodded, and he looked away at the window and chuckled a bit.

"It all makes me wonder like there are such things as problems in this world at all" he said, all while chuckling. All we had to deal with were the mystery dungeons, as well as some outlaws. "The outlaws for instance, what reason could they have that would even remotely lead to stealing?" he asked. It was a great question. I did not have an answer myself. I shook my head. He noted that and placed his chin on the ground in an act of rest.

Chimecho came to us after ten minutes of silence, and thinking. "You two can go out to Treasure Town if you like, but no physical activity, alright? I will personally knock you both out and drag you back here if you do. Then, I will place you under house arrest until you are better".

I had taken the first one seriously, but Caleb certainly was scared by the second one. We both nodded vigorously, kind of scared of the floating pokemon. She could probably pull it off too, because I was not about to fight anybody, fearing that the darkness would take over and make me hurt her, and Caleb was not the best at fighting.

Chimecho discharged us, and we got ourselves out of there before anything happened to us.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

We made it to treasure town with little effort, even though it was all a bit painful for the both of us. I was glad Sarah was not here to take advantage of me today. We went to sharpedo bluff and watched the sky. "Never has the sky looked so pure and blue, with minimal clouds to me" I told Mightyena "The closest I came to this image was a beach in the middle of nowhere, and we had a decent scene until it started raining on us. Hard".

He had been smiling at the image I painted until I mentioned the rain. "The weather was poor after that?" he asked. I nodded. We had talked all the way, and now the sun was below the midway point. We had been out here for quite a while, chatting as friends. It had been so long since I had a proper friend since Riley, and he was not always around as much as I would like. Riley had been a good friend but jokes between us had not gone well because we had different senses of humor. Mightyena was easily the best friend I ever had.

"Perhaps Chimecho will only give us a slap on the wrist, or ankle in our cases, if it comes to us accidentally getting too active" Mightyena speculated, while I stared at him.

"A slap on the wrist is a human expression" I said, surprised. He looked surprised as well. "Really?" he asked. I nodded, and he looked very confused.

"The closest thing I can imagine is that there is some sort of influence between the two worlds of ours, yet I had never heard of pokemon before".

"Huh…" Mightyena responded, looking confused as all get out. I probably had a stupid expression. Our discussions had ceased there, so I tried to get back on topic to important things.

"That issue with your health… Do you think we can cure it anytime soon?" I asked.

"I won't be able to give you any information, so no, I don't think so" he said in defeat.

I shook my head in sympathy. This was vexing, that there was nothing I could do to help my friend. I grimaced as my head spiked in pain.

"You" a hostile voice said behind us.

We turned slowly, trying to avoid pain, and gave the pokemon there a look of confusion, wondering what they wanted. My mind clicked into high gear when I recognized that stupid skunk pokemon thing who had whacked his team around when they were hurt.

"Did you have a question for me?" I asked, while Mightyena growled at the three of them. I guess they were annoying even by Mightyena's old standards, before he met us.

"Skuntank" Mightyena growled "What do you want with the two of us?"

"Chaw-haw-haw" the 'skuntank' laughed.

_What a ridiculous laugh._

"Are you going to answer him?" I asked crossly. The blue glow that came from my sword was turning red slowly. The skuntank pointed his paw at me. "I want that pretty gem of yours of course" he said, and emitted another ridiculous Laugh. Mightyena became still, and his growling ceased. Why? did he not exactly like my sword? It was probably because it was so dangerous, but I needed it to fight.

Mightyena saw me watching him, and I nodded. Skuntank was watching the scenario with interest. "You had that over now" he told me, stepping up.

"I can promise you I will discard this thing before I leave this world. I have no need of it in the human world" I told Mightyena, who visibly looked relieved, though a little disappointed. "I need it right now" I finished, and unsheathed it. Mightyena backed away from the thing, fear flaring though his eyes. I would have frowned at the odd behavior if I could, but I had a sword in my mouth. Skuntank seemed to realize it had been a weapon. My head started to hurt again, but I ignored it.

"First lesson: This weapon is very dangerous and you do not know how to wield it" I told Skuntank, who frowned at where I was going with this. Suddenly, he charged. I jumped and gave him a proper whack and he slammed into the ground. I followed up with a slash, damaging him. "Second lesson: This is a crystal, not a gem. And third:" I finished, whacking him again "that laugh of yours is the stupidest thing I have ever heard".

He got up, and looked apprehensively at the red blade I held, realizing that I could take him down with it. The two pokemon behind me, the weird purple ball, and the batlike thing with no eyes, drew closer. I viewed them with my absol sense, adding them to my mental map of the surroundings. Mightyena moved forward and got in the way, causing them to back away quick. "Chumps…" Mightyena muttered possibly meaning that we were not supposed to be fighting, and that we were not in good shape. My mind was telling me the same thing.

Suddenly, while the skuntank made his decision, his friends were slammed into the ground by an unseen force.

"Unacceptable!" shrieked a voice that I recognized.

_Good timing, Chimecho._

Realizing that he was way outnumbered he growled and left. Chimecho flew up to us, and I shuddered when I saw that she was completely furious.

"To think I can't let you out of the guild for an hour and a half!" she snapped at us.

"Were innocent!" I said quickly. Mightyena nodded vigorously. Neither of us were brave enough to incur the wrath of the living wind chime. We awaited more yelling, but Chimecho just sighed and then said "come with me, you two are going back to the guild". We tried to protest, but Chimecho was not allowing that. "Come with me, or I use that flag there to tie you up and drag you along" she said. We just followed her meekly back to the guild. Man, was that woman scary.

After more conversation, and avoiding the crazy wind chime, I took a thirty minute long shower in the warm waterfall room. Mightyena was rather amused by how long I had just stood in there, but I was now tired. Mightyena had to go back to his place, which Chimecho insisted on taking him there. Mightyena wanted to avoid going alone anywhere with her now, but Chimecho instructed me to rest.

_Poor Mightyena. _

Well, once they were gone, I had to go to sleep. Maybe I could solve this headache thing in my dreams tonight. I was excited at the concept of having more free time with my friends there. I now had so many friends. I began to realize as I began to sleep what I was doing.

_I am becoming attached to this place. I have too many friends. I can still get out of here, but I must limit myself. Mightyena understands. Servine understands, but if I make any other friends, they could be hurt by my departure. I think Mightyena will feel a sense of loss anyhow, but I needed a friend to get by. Does that make me a bad person, to allow Mightyena to feel pain when I leave? I basically created a permanent friendship with the guy. Was that a mistake, or was that to my benefit? Why do I care about myself all of a sudden? It's Mightyena and the others I need to worry about. _

_I'm sorry, Mightyena, my friend. You are doomed to see me go._

* * *

**I'll let you all fill in the blanks on the conversation Mightyena and Caleb had to lead up to Mightyena's questions. I'm certain your imaginations can think of something, humorous or otherwise. **

**This chapter was hard work in the making. I almost had to redo the entire thing because of a contradiction. I don't like contradictions. **

**I still look at my work after it goes online, and see the asterisks that i use to censor stuff gone, replaced by the full word. I think Jango is responsible, so i will have a chat with him. I will keep an eye on this computer for a while tonight. Hopefully, it wont happen again. **

**Please review. Tell me what you want to see, what you liked seeing, what you would suggest for improvement. Every bit helps me write a better story. I hope you all enjoyed chapter 19. Thank you all, and have a good day!**

**Character bios of course, are still open. The fill-out is at the bottom, if you have an idea. Happy reading, everyone!**

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	20. Chapter Twenty: Result

**'Sup, everybody!**

**So things are going fine here, no Hyper at the moment. But you probably are not interested at all about that. This chapter, then. Hyperjade could be a little more consistent with his word count, but he did not want to add filler. Maybe i should have a chat with him about that. Anyways, enjoy the chapter, all of you. **

* * *

Chapter 20: Result

⾚Riley's POV⾚

Caleb was hurting still, so training was not going to happen. That was all fine, at least he was resting. I had not intention of causing so much damage, though it was not my fault. Caleb had informed me of why it had happened; His conflicting mindsets about the situation, most likely from having a different brain entirely, along with him fighting instincts. I felt bad for the guy, I really did. On the other hand, I still ached from having to basically disassemble a tree and having it fight back. I was fighting with saws, not swords or axes. Nobody should imagine that taking down a tree with minimal damage to oneself is not difficult. I basically grinded it away for hours before Caleb was suffering a headache.

_I wonder what will happen now? He'd better not suffer this for too long. _

If Caleb's headache got too bad, the dream world would begin to get messed up more and more, until it totally collapsed. That meant that Caleb was not allowed to do anything exerting under any circumstances. He kept trying, though, wanting to keep moving. He was so impatient, and I was under the impression that he used to have a better time of being patient. Just another multi-personality situation.

Instead of training, though I think I probably knew all I needed to, I watched Caleb and made certain he did not do anything. Eventually, he just got insanely bored, and I had to be on extra alert to make certain that he was not moving, even holding the guy down when he actually tried to push past me.

"I'm sorry, Riley" Caleb muttered "I feel messed up right now. I feel like i'm fighting myself, and I want to distract myself…".

"I know" I told him "Just try not to move, alright? I'll keep you down if you lose control, right?". He nodded.

Caleb closed his eyes and just rested there. I stood at attention, hand ready to halt any physical activity that he tried to involve himself in any activity.

_You just lay there. I won't let you move an inch. _

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I was just thinking. Slowly, but I was doing it. My eyes closed, I did my best not to make my head hurt. I was waiting for something to solve itself, I guess. I had no idea what I was doing.

_If I am going to go crazy, I might as well do it now, right?_

_Maybe I should hope that the problem goes away when I return home._

_If I am sick, can I really make it through the dungeon that I will eventually have to go through to get to this portal Palkia mentioned?_

_How am I certain that I will have to go to a dungeon?_

_Have I met myself? Yeah, I am pretty sure I have. My luck sucks, despite my apparent inner ability of super luck. _

_What a misnomer. _

_Yeah, and if I ever get out of here, I may just forget this whole thing happened. _

_Perhaps. I cannot forget Mightyena or Servine or Nincada, however. They have been good friends. _

_I should not forget the scenery, either. _

_I would rather avoid that now, and remember it when I am long gone and home. _

_Home… What will that look like?_

_Maybe the closest thing to heaven that I could believe in. _

_There certainly seems to be gods here, unlike any evidence otherwise back home. _

_Palkia is basically a god, huh? and if he controls space here, does he control space back in the human world?_

_Listen to me, thinking of it as 'the human world'. _

_I feel shame. _

_Not as much as I should. _

_I don't live here._

_For now I do. _

_I can't think like that_

_I __**can**__, but it's not too good for me. _

_Darn right it's not. _

When I began to agree with myself more, my headache lessened. I had to find something I could agree on, then. I thought about what I could possibly agree with myself on in this circumstance. I was fighting instincts, after all. Thoughts that were based on an absol's mind. What could I agree on that an absol would?

The problem was, I had no real idea what an absol would think right now. Despite the attitude I have been expressing, I don't know what one would agree with. What ideals. I was still me, just with differing attitudes. I had nothing to go on. Sarah gave me nothing, because it was clear that she was different from the others, in the way of personality.

_How did I know that?_

_I met one other absol. The one who insulted Sarah. _

_Oh, him. _

He had been an arrogant prick, that was for certain, but I thought about how that guy had just pretended that nothing had happened. Was it because he was shoving away emotions of surprise, or had he just moved on?

_Absols can move on from things, and get to the next thing. Useful. _

_At some point, I need Sarah to explain everything absol. _

_Wait, no I don't, unless I have any intent of staying. _

_Which I don't. _

_I'm glad I can agree with… Myself. This is still weird._

_Maybe that is the difficulty. _

_The difficulty is finding something I can completely agree on. Something that is absolutely the same for the both of us. _

_And what could that be?_

_That absol who insulted Sarah was completely unreasonable in his accusation. _

_Actually, now that we know Sarah more…_

_Ugh, fine. How about this…_

I rattled off a few more things that we might agree on, but even if we agreed, the attitude was different about it.

_Spinda's milkshakes are quite good. _

_Eh, they're fine I guess._

_Remember first grade?_

_Yeah, and it was fine. The kid that blamed you for everything means nothing. _

_I wish there was some form of chocolate on this world…_

_I have black gummis for days. They taste quite like chocolate. _

This was getting me nowhere, and I sighed. Riley tensed and prepared for me to bolt or something, but I was not about to do that. I just could not decide on something. Furthermore, the absol part of me seemed to be optimistic about somethings, and nonchalant about other things, while I was supposed to be more consistent. Where was the median? Did one exist? If not, I would be fighting myself until the day I left. I had no idea about what to do, and I began to despair. My head was hurting again. I had been agreeing with myself for a bit, but now I was fighting somewhat. What was wrong with me if I could not even make a solid decision anymore?

I tried some other things, but there was a serious lack of any progress. I grimaced from the pain, but I had to keep trying.

"Hey" Riley said "You better not be analyzing anything, Caleb".

_If there was a way to agree…_

_I would have to continuously agree to stop the pain, no? What happens if I lost track of things in battle?_

_I would likely get hit. Hard. That cannot happen. _

_That would be terrible, wouldn't it?_

_I need to find something that I can't possibly find two different opinions for. _

_I want it to be somewhat connected to the situation at hand, however. _

_What could possibly only have one answer?_

_I… Don't know. I don't know that. _

_This is a question of attitude. What would I think the same exact thing about?_

…

_Would staying be acceptable?_

_No!_

_No!_

…

_That worked somewhat. Is Sarah acting reasonably?_

_No._

_No._

…

_Do I want to go home?_

…

_Yes._

…

My headache… It was gone. Entirely. I could agree with myself. I had no conflicts. I felt no fighting in my head. Relief flooded through me. I felt different, not the same as I had before this whole thing began. I felt like I was an entirely different person, like a mix of two personalities. When I thought about something, I could think about it like an absol would or like a human would, and I knew, just then, that I could choose which situations to think like a human and which to act like an absol. I could do it. Leave combat to my instincts and analyze things properly when they came along. I felt… strong.

"Caleb? What are you doing?" Riley asked coming closer. I could see him perfectly, my absol sense heightened by my unison with my instincts. It had taken only a few sentences really, and I felt it. The change was permanent. "Caleb, the air around you, it's bending" Riley said.

That was news. I opened my eyes, and saw that the bedroom was being distorted, bending away from me. I looked at it blankly. Why was it doing that? Riley seemed unaffected by the change. Was I just stronger in will?

_Stop that. Stop that right now. _

The dream complied. The world snapped back into place in an instant. Riley whipped his head around, and got in front of me. "Stop that!" he exclaimed "You'll hurt yourself!"

I smiled then. "Not anymore" I said "I think it's fixed. Forever".

He frowned. "Nice try, Caleb. I don't think you are fully recovered. Don't try to get past me".

"How do you imagine i'm not fine?" I asked. That was out of Character for me, but everything I did from here until I got home would likely be somewhat out of character. I just had to accept it. I wondered what I could do to be more comfortable, since Riley was not about to let me go anywhere. I felt a certain weight on my chest that I recognized: My armor. It was in the way right now. I did not need it at the moment. It was always in the way when I slept, thinking about it. It's jewel had no meaning to me, it was just a green sphere with some pattern that was hard to make out because of the position of my head. The dream armor was even more pointless. I wanted to see myself fully. I viewed the armor with my absol sense. Then, I made it vanish.

Riley made a sound of surprise, and immediately felt my head. I guess it was a normal temperature, just like before, so it did not tell him anything. "Caleb, hurting yourself can only hurt this place!" he said, almost yelling. I was not listening so intently, however, because I was suddenly feeling a sense of relief. Like Sarah, I had a bunch of fur coming from my neck and chest. It had been pressed against my chest with the armor on, and I felt it poof out. It was so, so relieving. It was an outright same I had no idea how to take my armour off in the real world, seeing as it seemed to be a solid piece.

My fur being allowed free of where it was pressed against me, I realized just how much that fur had been pressing against me, and how annoying it had been. My permanent winter coat just seemed much less annoying, and so much more comfortable. Maybe I could cool down a bit. I sighed with utter relief a few seconds after Riley had finished his sentence. It just felt so **wonderful**.

I knew that the sense of euphoria I was going through was not the kind I would have experienced as a human, but I let that slide. I was, after all, now mentally both human and absol. I had to allow that to work out if I was going to succeed until I got home. For now, I was an absol. For now, I would act and react like one.

"I'm alright, Riley. I solved my headache problem. I feel even stronger now, in fact" I informed Riley, standing up as I did so. Riley warily looked at me, and apparently noticed the lack of wincing or other signs of pain in my face. "Are you sure?" he asked. I nodded in response. I jumped off the bed reluctantly and was now at a lower elevation to Riley, who had a full two feet on me. He seemed to note the quickness to my step.

"It seems I am in good health now" I said with some cheerfulness in my voice. I awaited Riley's response. He was looking at me with an odd expression, but that soon was replaced by acceptance. "Fine…" he muttered "now you can help me entertain those kids until you leave".

My slight smile lessened a bit as I realized the kind of day it was going to be, but it soon returned even wider. It was good fun, after all. Before we left, I made a mirror in my room.

_I had developed a phobia of these things earlier. _

It seemed that my fear of these things have been absolved for the most part. I still recalled the mirror maze, and I probably would never touch waterfall cave ever again, but this mirror caused no fear for me. I looked at myself without armour on. The fur on my chest and neck hung loosely, and appeared far more ungroomed than Sarah's did. It looked natural, honestly, to my absol/human brain. Sarah's fur had been much smoother.

_Hang on, where am I going with that?_

I was not about to find out. I quickly turned away and led Riley downstairs and then outside. The little absols were playing rather rough on the hill, tackling each other and whatnot. I guess they did not have me as their punching bag.

They did now.

"Caleb!" my child counterpart squeaked, rushing at me.

"Riley!" Sarah's counterpart squeaked, rushing at him. We both prepared ourselves for impact, through said impact was rather minor. Child me smashed into my chest, making me glad that I had removed the armor even more. His head came up, half covered in the fur on my chest because of how he moved up. I heard a grunt as Child Sarah jumped into him. He had caught the absol in his arms, getting his left coat sleeve torn from her horn. I mentally fixed it before he noticed, and I did so without difficulty.

Child Me was now sitting back. Since when had he so much control over himself? His smile and wagging sword-tail was very cute, despite the fact that he was an absol, and absol tend to be threatening in appearance. Not these two, and definitely not Sarah. I was the only one of four absol to look threatening at all, really. I don't smile like any of those three. "Are you all right? I apologize for not being available the last two days" I told him. His smile widened. While I awaited his response, Riley's grunt in the background and my absol sense told me that Child Sarah had less restraint than my counterpart. Riley was currently pretending to be downed and was getting tackled.

"Riley and Sarah played with me plenty!" he exclaimed. I noticed that he was using terms I generally would. Was that because he was a small me, or was that guardian influence? Perhaps I was inadvertently teaching him things by the way I acted. I was basically the parent in these kid's eyes.

_Wow, that gave me a headache. A normal one, not some confliction. Stop thinking about parenthood. Noted. _

"That's great" I said, putting a paw on his head and rubbing it back and forth. He made a sound somewhere between a kid's squeal and a dog's yip and got away. Riled up, Child Caleb jumped at me. Sarah gave me a surprise attack from behind, and suddenly it was just like the day I had made crater lake appear in this dream world. I glanced at Riley, who was leaning against the wall of the building, legs and arms crossed, and a half smile on his face. He wore those sunglasses I had given him, and I expected he would not want to take them off anytime soon. The whole image gave off a silent, cool image. That was what he was trying for, and he achieved it perfectly with those shades.

"You're welcome" I told him, before getting jumped on again. Occasionally, I would jump to the side or something, or plant my paw on one of their faces and knock them away painlessly. My body no longer felt awkward, now that I had compromised between me and my instincts. Riley smirked at me before he said: "I think i'll go train a bit more with these". He pulled out the snow saws. "Care to animate a few trees for me?"

"Done" I said, looking out into the birch forest section to the right and mentally set up three trees to attack Riley. "Three of the trees in that birch forest will attack you if you get too close". He nodded and walked off. The kids started to follow him, but I remembered to call them back.

"What Riley is doing is a bit dangerous. I don't want you two going into the birch forest until Riley gives the all clear, alright?".

They nodded yes, and also calmed down a bit. They wanted to visit the lake, so I left a note for Riley at the door to use that fancy teleporter to get to the lake. That is exactly what we did, and I got to watch the kids rush down the crater, managing not to kill themselves on the trees on the way down, and drove themselves into the warm water. I followed at a quick pace, faster than I ever would have attempted before because I would have tripped. Now, I found roots and trunks and rocks to push off of all over the place, and parkoured all the way down.

Of all the pokemon I could have become, it was extremely beneficial that I had become an absol. I was tougher than others, and could see all around me with my supersense. I had claws to rip through things, and my bladelike tail and horn made for excellent weapons. It was certainly an advantage to become this, compared to what I could have become. I imagined being a pokemon without arms, or one that had wings, or one that defied all explanation. I felt lucky when I thought about it that way.

_Does not change the fact that I am here in the first place._

I looked out at the island in the lake once I reached the waterline. I tried to recall it's name. "You two!" I called to the kids who were splashing each other in the shallow bit I had created. I walked over as they turned their happy-go-lucky attention to me. "Do you know the name of that island?". It was not a real question. I knew what it was, but I was about to pull a story out of my arse. I hoped it was of a quality that kids enjoy. I don't remember how childrens books were structured, because it had been too long since I had a proper childhood.

"No, what is it?" they asked together, eagerly. I walked to the waters edge and sat there, remembering easily this time to bring my tail up to avoid impaling the ground. They stood near me, looking at it.

"That island is called 'Wizard island'" I began "would you like to know why?". They nodded yes, and I began my story. I felt bad for making it up, but hey, these kids were happy when I told them things. They had been overjoyed when I had lied to them, saying that the dream was theirs. Riley had even avoided talking about the effect I had on the dream when they were in the room.

"Once upon a time…"

* * *

I closed the book I had generated, recording the improvised story in front of me. The sun was going down, and I would have to leave soon. The kids knew it. I picked the book up in my mouth and we began the trip back to the house.

"How'd it do?" Riley asked.

"Caleb told us a story!" The kids said. Riley noticed the book in my mouth. I nodded and walked inside.

"Did he now?" Riley asked, pretending to be stunned. Or maybe he was not pretending. Whatever. I created a bookshelf next to the door, part of the wall. I placed the book in there upright with some difficulty, and then had to switch it because it was upside down. After I was done, I looked at how big the thing was. Did I intend to make so many stories? "Wizard Island" sat there in the bookshelf in the shelf second closest to the bottom. It was the only book in it at all. Riley entered, nodded, and went up to the room I rested in. I followed, prompting the kids to follow me as well.

After I laid down on the freaky mix of pokemon bed and human bed that I had created, I said goodbye to the kids. They were sad to see me go, but they had quite enjoyed the story, and could read it whenever they wanted. They nuzzled up against me, but I found it less weird. This was probably because of my new mindset. Was this going to affect my actions? I hoped that I could get home before I found out.

_What if I don't become the person I was when I left? would that be an upside or a downside? I should be back to normal right?_

I felt myself beginning to wake up, and my paws became transparent as I began to fade. The real world would feel so much colder than this place.

⾚Riley's POV⾚

It was a cryin' shame that Caleb had to go every day. I had decided to wait at the house, instead of going to the lake. I preferred to hike up that way, anyway. The birch forest was three trees short, and one tree in the high desert was torn up as well. Caleb would have to get to fixing that tomorrow. He was basically the caretaker of this place, while I was the guardian. I wondered what led to his decision to get rid of the armor in the dream. Maybe he could not get rid of it in the other world, and that was probably why he wanted it off here, but the timing of the situation had puzzled me. His attitude had changed as well. His headache was gone, but it seemed he had to change something about himself to do it.

_I hope that it is not harmful to him. _

Caleb's little challenge had been painful as hell. It had led me to believe that they would all be separate. How wrong I was. One tree was alone, but two others were together, and gang attacked me. I had suffered quite the bit of damage before those stupid trees stopped fighting back, most if not all of their limbs cut off. After I had calmed down about that, I saw that Caleb had placed a little book in his new bookcase. I read it, smiling.

_The lying bugger. _

I had a glimpse of memory of crater lake, courtesy of Caleb's messy attempt at creating a conscious being in a dream. he had succeeded, but… The memory was a board with stuff on it, one being the reason the island was named wizard island. This thing made for a much better story, including a fake reason that there was a ship shaped piece of land right off of wizard island. It was very entertaining.

It was a children's book, which made sense considering it was meant for the kids. Maybe I would have Caleb write **me **a book. He was a half decent story teller. I closed the book and replaced it on the shelf, before sitting back on the chair I had found and began to think.

_The day Caleb leaves… What will the future of this place be? It's possible that it might be destroyed. I can't do anything about that. I want Caleb to get home as much as the rest of us do. If we disappear when that happens, so be it. _

_I don't want the kids to… die. That would hurt so bad, but the fact that they are alive right now is a fantastic achievement. _

_I will make sure that those two are as happy as possible before the transition, in case our world ends. These kids deserve a happy rest of their lives. _

_Do I? Do I deserve that as well? _

_Focus on the children. They don't understand. It is my duty. _

…

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

"UP AND AT 'EM! IT'S MORNING!"

"Uuuugh" I groaned as I shifted in bed until I was on my back, my legs bent at the joints, generally exhausted and with a painful ringing in my ears.

_Darn it all, Loudred! Stop interrupting my dreams!_

"Get up, Sarah" Nincada said, and I had only one more moment to enjoy the pure bliss that was my bed before he surfaced under me and pushed me out of it. I went from the soft, welcoming hay to the cold, brown dirt.

"Fine, fine, i'm up" I muttered as I slowly got up "I don't hear you pushing Caleb out of bed". Caleb suddenly just walked by me, and down the hall. "I don't need to" Nincada said.

I looked after Caleb. He had not even said a word, yet there had been a smile on his face. That smile probably came from his dreams. Whatever they were about. Seeing him get away motivated me quickly. Nincada was barely on by the time that I had started running to catch up to him.

"Sarah!" Nincada protested "I almost fell off!"

"Sorry" I muttered as I caught up to Caleb, and fell in step with him.

"So!" I said cheerfully "What are we doing today, eh? Another mission I suppose, though it always turns into an adventure with you!". I drew closer to him at that, and he disappeared in an awesome display of quick attack and halted at the edge of the hallway. He gave me a glare and walked in. It was not too often that he actually glared at me. I suppose that I have been trying too hard.

_If I don't, he will end up leaving, and I will have nobody. I can't afford to go easy on him. _

That in mind, I joined him where the guild was gathering. The morning cheer when as expected, and Caleb was mouthing all of the words. He would likely have been drowned out by Loudred anyway, so there was no way for Chatot to call him on it. Wigglytuff was just standing there, doing nothing. I would not check on him though, considering what had happened to Jake and poor Caleb, blasted away by the sleeping Wigglytuff. He had apparently been sleeping with his eyes wide open, and Caleb had woken him up with a prod.

The cheer ended quickly, and we all dispersed upstairs one pokemon at a time. Caleb almost slipped on the way. At the board today, Servine was there with her teammates.

"Hello, Servine" Caleb said, catching the leader's attention.  
"Oh, hello, Caleb" she said, looking up from the job that they might take. "I take it you're feeling better?"

"Much, yes" Caleb confirmed "No throbbing headache today.

"I'll be the judge of that!" a high pitched voice said loudly behind us. I jumped about two inches into the air, and Caleb looked behind him, also looking somewhat startled. I guess he forgot to use his abilities as well. "Chimecho" Caleb said blandly.

The chime pokemon was there, looking prepared to do whatever was necessary to make certain that Caleb was not lying. She pulled a somewhat fearful looking Caleb to the corner to interrogate him. I tried to follow, but telltale vines wrapped around my middle and halted me in my tracks.

"What gives, Servine?" I asked, looking back at her. Servine was shaking her head in disapproval. Once I had stopped moving, the vines retracted, but they were held above servine at the ready in case I bolted. "It's best to leave him, Sarah" Servine instructed, making me very annoyed in the process. I scowled, and her vines visibly tensed. Would this turn into a fight? I could burn her in an instant. Sure, she was more experienced, but what good were vines when you were facing waves of fire?

"Do not fight me, Sarah" Servine said threateningly. I scoffed, but I let the fire die down. "Your attachment to Caleb is bringing you to make rash decisions, Sarah. I am not your enemy" Servine said.

_She's right. _

I felt bad now. Servine was definitely not my enemy. "I'm so sorry…" I muttered. Suddenly, Servine gave me a smile. "I know you love the guy. Believe me, I know what love feels like, though it has been awhile. But Caleb has to go home, and I intend to get him there. Sarah, you can't do this to him. **Maybe** he's the only guy you want, and **maybe **you can't bear to lose him, but this is about Caleb. Not you". Servine's smile disappeared when she said that last sentence. "Both me and Mightyena owe him this. He changed us both for the better. I used to think that I could avoid responsibility by pretending it was not my problem. Mightyena used to be one of the worst people I had ever met, even when he was a poochyena. Now, he's Caleb's best friend, and he likes you as well". Servine finished her speech with a deep breath to regain the oxygen she had just used. I don't know if she was used to talking that much.

_I am being extremely selfish about this, and I owe it to him as well. _

_but…_

"I don't care if it is selfish of me. I just… I can't let him go" I told Servine. Her face was grim. "Then I will have to stop you, Sarah".

"I know".

"I will do my best".

"I know".

"I will succeed, Sarah".

"Maybe. Just maybe" I said "**But**… I may succeed too".

Servine looked pained. I felt pained. This was impossibly selfish, but I tried not to care. I would not care when it came to it. Caleb started coming back, and looked me right in the eye.

"I need a moment to talk with Servine" he said flatly. I wanted to protest, but his red eyes bore into me, saying _Don't you dare argue_.

I sighed, and relented, moving away from the two to inspect the jobs. As Nincada began to read them aloud and judge our chances of success, I tried to listen to what they were saying behind me. To my dismay, they were too quiet.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

"What did you wish to talk to me about, Caleb?" I asked, preparing myself for anything. Well, not anything. Just what he was likely to say.

"Servine, you know how Sarah will be when I need to return. Will you be able to stop her?"

"You know that I will do the very best that I can" I told him. He nodded.

"Thank you for everything, Servine. And I understand why you phrased it that way".

That threw me for a loop. **I **didn't even know why I always phrased things that way. "Y-you do?" I stammered.

"Yes. I do it as well. I'm afraid that I won't be able to keep my promise, and so I tell them what I really think. I can't force myself to make promises. It scares me, honestly" he said "When you make a promise, and you can't keep it, it is more than unacceptable. It is the worst thing to happen to you, because you are judging yourself even more than other judge you. I am afraid of that as much as I am of public humiliation. Like me, you avoid promises to avoid the shame of failure. You used to avoid trusting others so that you don't feel responsible when they fail or betray you".

My jaw was open slightly. I went to say something, but it probably would not have been an intelligent comment anyways, so I shut my yap and waited for him to continue. "I may have orchestrated change in you and Mightyena, but I have not done so for myself. Right now, you two have become better people than I can be seen as in that regard".

"Don't say that!" I exclaimed "If you had any idea how everyone else in the guild views you… Well, you'd realize that everybody likes you. You get things done, do impressive things. Solve puzzles, do things nobody, not even Jake has. You've faced outlaws, challenged rules, and you do your best every day! Nobody has any claim to your social throne. You challenge Chatot in front of everybody because you think something is unfair or doesn't make sense! You're brave enough to wake Wigglytuff up without warning! You gave that skuntank a run for his money while you were suffering a colossal headache! Everybody thinks there is no limit to what you can do!". I took a deep breath to regain some of the air I had used, and it almost was not enough. I don't make speeches like that often.

Caleb stared at me. He blinked. After a few minutes of utter silence, his eyes drooped a bit as if he was tired. "Thank you, Servine" he said. "A few of those stories bay have been embellished a little, but I get your reasoning. The trouble is, I don't know if what others think of me really matters when it comes to how good of a person you are".

_My, you're quite pessimistic._

"Caleb, I think your impression on others makes all the difference in the world. If you can't put yourself into society, they will just marvel at you from a distance. It means everything what others think of you, when it comes to who you are. If their ideas are based on truth, the truth is what they think. Maybe a few stories got embellished a little when they made it to me. There are plenty untainted stories going around to show what kind of bravery and selflessness you have. Even your reason to get back home, it's about your family, right? Anybody else would be worried about themselves, but I bet you have not thought about yourself at all".

After I took another deep breath, I saw something I have not before. Caleb smiled. A big, real smile, bigger than the ones he wears when sleeping. Caleb was **happy**. I had made the guy happy. I imagine that would be seen as an achievement, but I did not care. My friend was happy for the first time, openly and without mirth. He had been laughing in waterfall cave, but it had been a joke, and how fast it had disappeared told me that it was a mild convenience for him. Now, when he laughed, there was no humor in it. He was just completely happy.

"Thank you, Servine" he said again, but this time, nothing followed. I would keep an eye out for when Palkia returned, and would follow if I could. I would do so because one other would do so. Sarah would follow if she gets the chance. If she tried to fight, I would reveal the true strength I possessed. All for Caleb to get home. It was no longer because I owed him, it was because I was his friend.

_It will be sad to see him go. _

I stopped short. What had Caleb said about that? Caleb had said that he did not want to hurt anybody with his departure. Now, he had failed to dissuade Sarah from loving him, in fact Sarah was obsessed with him, and Mightyena and now I was the greatest of friends with him.

Caleb figured it out, too, probably due to the facial expression I now wore. His smile and laugh vanished in an instant, leaving what looked like an emotionless shell. He wore that look often enough for it to hurt when he did. The poor guy did this to himself every day. "I am so, so sorry, Servine" he whispered, turning to leave to the board "I should not have done any of that. Now, the pain of my disappearance will be shared fully by you as well. I am so sorry Servine".

He began to leave, but I stopped him. "Don't be sorry" I told him. He looked around, and he looked utterly astonished. "How can you possibly forgive me? Now that we are friends, the day I leave will be the day you start to think 'what if'. I should not have done that to you".

"I forgive you because the memories of you will be happy for all of us" I said, and seeing his disbelieving stare, I said "I mean it. Mightyena and I, maybe 'what if' will be on our minds. But we both know that things worked out. We will be happy for you. The only person that will feel real pain…".

"Is Sarah" Caleb finished.

"Yeah, and you know that she is the only one who will stop you. You have friends who can stop her" I said. Caleb looked at Sarah, who was gazing at him. "I can't fault Sarah for her obsession" he said, surprising me "I understand what caused her to act like this".

That was interesting. What did Caleb know about why she was so infatuated with him? "Do tell" I told him.

"When I first met her, Sarah had spent almost all of her life scorned for being red instead of black. She had no friends, and me, I was quite possibly the first person to speak to her as if she was just like the others, like what she was did not matter. A lonely being can easily fall in love with someone they meet suddenly under those circumstances".

"Oh…" I said lamely, looking over at Sarah. Of course Sarah would be desperate if she thought nobody else could be like Caleb. That was because nobody else could to Sarah. Caleb had helped her out of her old life, where she had been discriminated against because she was different. She attached herself to Caleb, and if Caleb left, Sarah would have no idea what to do with herself.

_No wonder… Caleb is in trouble. I can only do my best to stop her. _

"Caleb, do not worry about our feelings right now. You're almost home. You'd better get yourself the rest of the way there before you get trapped here".

He looked at me gratefully. I was surprised by his sudden openness. His trust. I had become his friend, and then I had convinced him that as his friends, we would respect his decision to leave. There would be no pain on our part.

_Go ahead, Caleb. Get out there for today's work. Maybe Palkia will come today. Maybe he will come tomorrow. It will be soon. I really think so. _

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

Caleb joined us again. He looked different. Happy. It has been awhile since I had seen him smile when he was not asleep. He looked content. He looked downright cheerful, and seeing him like that made me happy as well. "What did Servine want?" I asked.

After I gave him my winning smile, Caleb began to look uneasy. I put as much innocence into my eyes as I could, but I soon realized that Caleb was far from gullible. He could not be tricked by something like cute eyes. "A simple discussion of current events, is all" Caleb told me unhelpfully. I guess I don't deserve a better answer, but I still wanted one.

"Care to be more specific?" I asked, expecting that he would elaborate. He was good at that, after all. One of the things I liked about the guy.

"No".

"Uh.. What?"

"No".

"That-"

"Sarah, I do not need to tell you what we were talking about".

Something occurred to me, what they could have been talking about. "Me?" I asked.

"Yes, you, Sarah. We were talking about you. We were also talking about Servine and Mightyena. We were talking about Palkia, and others. But sure, let's focus on you, Sarah. Where would you like me to begin with you?"

He was clearly annoyed with me. My heart dropped. "Sorry" I muttered. He looked skeptical, and his frown, it was so frustrated. "If you were sorry, I would not be dealing with this at all" he snarled.

"Why are you acting like that?!" I asked, begging for an answer "You used to be so kind, so nice! I-". I stopped. I knew what was up, why he was doing this. "You're faking. You don't want to do this. You're forcing yourself to be mean to me".

"Let me tell you something, **Sarah**" he snarled "Maybe I am forcing myself to act like this, and maybe it won't work on you, but let me tell you something. If this persists, I may not have to. If you continue to do this to me, my anger will be very, very real. Your actions make me uncomfortable now, and it needs to stop. Later, your actions will disgust me, make me want to retaliate. You are breaking me, Sarah, and in the worst way possible".

I stared at him, having absorbed his speech, and realizing what he was saying. He was growing angry with me, and he did not want to. He was saying that he will soon be led into actions that he does not want to take. He is saying that enough is enough.

_But if I accept that, Caleb will disappear forever. If I accept that, I will never see him again, never hear him again. Never speak to him again. Right now, I have to pretend to understand. _

"...All right…" I said reluctantly, and returned to what I was doing. That being staring at the job missions uncomprehensively. One detailed something to do with a fearow needing rescue from somewhere called Dark Crater. I walked forward before Nincada suddenly interrupted me.

"That mission is five stars for difficulty, Sarah" he whispered in my ear, and before Caleb saw what I was doing, I changed directions so that I was heading for one with a much lower rank. It talked about a machop that had gotten lost in some place called Amp Plains. Floor seven. I pulled it down. Caleb came up to me to check on it. "No restrictions" he grunted, and took it from me. He placed the map and instructions into his pack without hesitation. "We must visit Kangaskhan first" Caleb said.

On the other side of the room, Servine placed an outlaw job into the pack slung over her shoulder, and nod in Caleb's direction. Caleb got himself up the ladder, and Servine followed him. I came next, with the tangela twins not far behind. Servine had begun talking to Caleb again, and he was talking freely. Talking about certain things, like the human world, and speculating on how long it would take for Palkia to find Caleb's way home.

_I hope it takes forever. _

We made our way towards the storage building, and I tried my best to maintain conversation with the others. I tried to join the conversation by asking questions, and Caleb would answer freely, but he looked uneasy every time. I only tried to get quite close to Caleb once, but both he and Servine gave me the death glare. I felt a surge of jealousy before I recognized that Servine had basically sworn to help Caleb get home, so of course anything I do to make that harder makes her job harder.

I settled for staring at him. At one point, we came across a scuffle between two pokemon in the square, and both Servine and Caleb stepped forward.

"Is this something to be concerned about?" Caleb asked the two pokemon, who were startled and broke apart. A poliwag and a small pink ball pokemon that I did not recognise stared at the two much larger and much more menacing looking pokemon. Well, Servine does not look too menacing, but I had seen her fight. She would take apart Caleb any day. Not me, though, because I could just burn her down.

"U-uh…" the poliwag stammered.

"It isn't any of your business" The pink ball pokemon said, puffing up a bit with air and appearing bigger. Servine, unimpressed, rolled her eyes. "Jigglypuff, it's not acceptable to pick fights for no reason" she said. Jigglypuff seemed then to recognize the servine standing above her.

"Oh, it's you, Servine" she muttered. Servine did not answer her, instead looking at the poliwag. "Go on with what you were doing. It's alright" she soothed the poor, scared water type. He turned and ran while Servine confronted the small jigglypuff. "You" Servine said "cannot just pick fight for no reason".

"How do **you **know there was no reason?" Jigglypuff asked in an arrogant manner, like she was used to saying it. "Because there has never been a reason with you" Servine sighed with some defeat, as if she was used to replying in that way. "Off with you, Jigglypuff. Don't do that again". Jigglypuff groaned like a spoiled child and plodded off somewhere. "Sorry about that, Caleb" Servine said "let's go".

We continued without interruption. I had noticed the strength he had shown just to make the two pokemon break up their fight. His aura of power had made them focus on him easily. He was just so **obvious**, especially to me. His muscles were obvious behind the fur, his expression tough and open, daring anybody else to ignore him. I don't even think he does it on purpose.

"Ah, Kangaskhan" Caleb said, coming up to the large pokemon at the counter in her shop.

"Hello, sweetie. What can I do for you today?" Kangaskhan asked sweetly. She talked sweetly to everybody.

Servine stepped forward. "I need to store some items, including these" she said, pulling out some items, including a few apples, a max elixir, and a strange object that was basically a crystal shaped like a spike ball.

"Something you found in the dungeon?" Caleb asked. Servine nodded, and reached out with her vines to hand the items to Kangaskhan. Kangaskhan let Servine drop the items into her huge paw, before taking them away.

While Kangaskhan moved around in the back of her building, we heard somebody behind us.

"E-excuse me, I'm looking for Kangaskhan?"

At the same time, the buzzing of bug wings reached our ears. I turned my head to see a small, red pokemon with six black and white limbs, the white part being the feet of the pokemon. It had a red shell with black dots. It's eyes were big and round, and it's buzzing wings were barely visible, though it's open shell was certainly visible.

In other words, it was a ledyba. One who was carrying a few oran berries in her feet.

"This is Kangaskhan's storage facility" Caleb said. the ledyba did not like the look of Caleb's threatening form, and probably did not like mine either. It scared the poor kid. Caleb was going to continue, but Servine stopped him. She stepped in front, and Caleb said "I understand" before backing down.

"What did you need?" Servine asked, in a much more comforting pitch than Caleb could have managed. With Caleb's apparently terrifying absol image blocked by Servine, the ledyba relaxed. "Um… Farell wanted me to store these…" she said, showing the few berries she held. "He, uh, also wanted me to get a max elixir for the team". I watched the shy kid with interest, wondering if she would run or something.

"OK, dear, all stored away!" Kangaskhan said behind us, making me jump a bit.

_Why oh why do I not use my absol sense?_

"Thank you, Kangaskhan" Servine said. Caleb then walked toward Kangaskhan. "We need some more pecha berries, say three? An oran berry would be great as well".

"Of course sweetie. Oh, Layla? Is that you back there? Did you need something as well?" Kangaskhan asked.

"Oh, uh… Yes! Yes I do!" the ledyba exclaimed after some hesitation. She flew forward slowly. Apparently her name was Layla. "I have some berries that Farell wanted me to store here, an' he wanted me to take a max elixir back. Uh, that's okay with you, right?" she said. She was worried that Kangaskhan would not want to do it? What an unnecessary fear.

"It's no problem, sweetie!" Kangaskhan said sweetly "i do wonder why your team leader is not here, however. Has something come up?"

"Uh… Yes. Zoom had been caught pickpocketing again" Layla responded reluctantly "Farell is having a 'chat' with him. That's what he said, at least".

Kangaskhan sighed. "That boy farell, his 'chats' with Zoom tend to involve that stick of his more than any words". Layla seemed to realize that Kangaskhan already knew somehow, and that certainly meant that others knew about it, too. "Uh…" Layla said.

"I will be right back" Kangaskhan said, some of her usual cheerfulness a bit forced now. "Does this 'Zoom' do that often? Steal things?" I asked. Layla seemed quite startled when I spoke, spinning around in midair to look at me somewhat fearfully.

"Sorry I startled you" I quickly apologized. She seemed to calm down a bit, probably because my voice is far more high pitched than other absols. "Zoom, well, he just gets into lots of mischief. He takes things when they are available, which had gotten him into some… trouble. He always sneaks over to the people he messed with earlier and puts it back in their bags, but that's only after they notice and freak out. He's gotten caught so many times, well, he has problems with getting people to trust him" Layla said, her voice getting quieter over time.

"Oh…" I said, not really sure what to do with that information.

"My, that was a mouthful for you, sweetie" Kangaskhan said, scaring the living daylights out of me. She had come back, with a handful of berries that she handed to Caleb. He put them one at a time in the bag while Kangaskhan continued talking.

Layla was far more scared than I was by her sudden appearance. "Layla, that is the most I have ever heard coming out of your mouth" Kangaskhan said, and before Layda could apologize, Kangaskhan continued. "It's not a bad thing, Layla" she said sweetly "Communication is best for members of rescue teams" she said.

_This pokemon is part of a rescue team? Oh, yes, I guess that was why the others she mentioned have something to do with her. Now that I think about it, how would she get herself involved with those two if she was not on a team?_

"Th-Thank you, ma'am" Layla stammered, and then she fled quickly with the max elixir.

We watched her go. Servine seemed worried. "I'd better go after her, see if that team she mentioned is getting along well. See you tomorrow, unless you, you know, disappear" she told Caleb.

"Yeah. Unless I disappear. Thank you, Servine. For everything. Tell Mightyena I say the same to him if i do" Caleb said, and Servine nodded, and then she began to sprint after the ledyba. Kangaskhan seemed confused by the whole scenario, but said nothing except: "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No. thank you, Kangaskhan" Caleb said. He turned away towards the road again, and I followed him closely. What made the guy think there was a greater chance that Palkia would show up today? Perhaps it could be hope. Perhaps he really was just saying _Just in case, goodbye. _

He walked briskly, muttering underneath his breath about how we should move as quickly as possible. Me and Nincada were silent. Nincada was checking my bags, making sure that we had what we needed. I was just watching Caleb. Watching him move, talk, watching just as he was. Maybe I would not get to be with him very much longer.

_Don't think like that. I can stop him…_

We arrived at the intersection. Caleb prepared to go straight and towards the next dungeon. "We go to amp plains" Caleb started "Once we are there, we need to consider our options. It will be our first time there, so we cannot assume anything. Due to its title however, I have reason to believe that it will be populated by electric types. Nincada, you will prove a great asset in this dungeon, While Sarah and I will be able to provide decent damage as well. We have the necessary supplies, and we have the strength to get through this dungeon. Now, we may have done the last few serious jobs as a team of nine, but I believe-"

**vvvvvvvvvvVVVVVVVVVVVV… BOOOOOM!**

_What? No! Not already! Please, just one more day! Is that such an unfair wish?_

I whirled around, while Caleb was far more calm, and then, very slowly, we looked up at the silhouette above us That had suddenly appeared, its massive shadow hiding the dun from us.

_It's too soon…_

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**Hey, Guys! Finally got to making the author's note. I have been somewhat busy today, so...**

**Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I have a serious question for you guys, that i would like you to answer either in the review section OR in the Personal Messages. Lately, the word count of my chapters has been all over the place. The amount of chapters i planned to exist in the first book have been diminished because i found myself using over 10,000 words in some of my recent chapters, and now i am nearing a point i wanted to reach in chapter 24. This chapter is just about 9,000 words, and i want to know whether you guys would like me to cut my chapters below 10,000 words, or should they be longer.**

**The former, shorter than 10,000 words, will result in having a few more chapters than above, and having some chapters be over 10,000 words would not rule out chapters below that, and the chapter word count would be much more varied. So, i would like to know which setup i should choose. Your opinion matters to me. **

**Now, moving on, I have exactly two submissions for Characters, with six characters. Total. **

**Team Titanium, submitted by Killerscorp943.**

**Team Outsiders, submitted by SilverScepter.**

**I Thank the both of you for sending me teams for the future in this story and/or the ones to come. Having only two submissions, I am EXTREMELY open to future submissions. Character submissions can be sent to me via personal email. Below this author's note is the layout for a character build.**

**Thank you all for reading this chapter, and i hope you enjoyed! If you want to receive notifications of updates via email, click the follow button. Are you enjoying this story a lot? Feel free to favorite. I hope all of you who enjoy this story will continue to enjoy this story for a while to come. Thank you. **

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	21. Chapter Twenty One: The Race

**All right! Things are finally kicking off now!**

**We finally get to this chapter. Everyone knows you need a way to build up tension for the climax! Uh, please don't tell Hyperjade i said that. He might think it counts as spoilers. I don't even know who reads my segments at the top of this thing. Hyper certainly doesn't... Anyhow, enjoy the chapter!**

**-Jango**

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Chapter 21: The Race

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

"Palkia" I said. On the inside, I was completely astonished. On the outside, I was as calm as I possibly could be. Palkia stood before me, and there was only one reason that he would do. Unless, of course, he could not find it, but that was basically impossible. It was a spacial rift, and he was basically the god of space. He would have found it. My heart soared like never before. I was going home!

"**I have come, human**" Palkia rumbled "**The path is clear to me, and is open for you. I have stabilized the dimensional gateway. We may travel as soon as you are prepared. I will wait here for you**".

"Thank you, Palkia" I said, containing my excitement. This was it. I was returning home, and now, nothing could possibly stop me. Sarah… I needed to send her on this mission. That way, she could not hinder me. there was one obligation I had, however.

"I must speak with Wigglytuff" I announced "Then, I shall be ready to depart". I turned away towards the guild, and I felt Sarah turn to follow me. "No, Sarah" I said harshly. She recoiled behind me. I did not even turn around. "You and Nincada are to go on this mission. I know you two are capable of doing missions on your own. Nincada…". I turned around. "Good work, Nincada. It was a pleasure to know you. I have confidence that you can help team Edge as much as possible. You have proven yourself capable. Thank you for everything you have done".

With that, I left. Sarah was absolutely still. Nincada was moving restlessly on Sarah's back. Both seemed to realize that I was saying goodbye. The two of them simply watched me leave. Eventually, I stopped paying attention to them as I neared the guild. I stepped on the grate.

"Pokemon detected! Pokemon detected!"

"Whose footprint? Whose footprint?"

"The footprint is absol's! the footprint is absol's!"

"Heard ya!"

Loudred appeared behind the door of the guild, promptly opening it. "HEY, CALEB! WHAT BRINGS YOU BACK HERE SO EARLY!?"

_Ow. _

"I must speak with Wigglytuff. It's a matter of urgency" I told him. He hesitated, probably wondering what was up with the tone of voice I had. "Uh… Right" he said, his voice not so loud this time. Good thing too, because my eardrums were ringing. He went back down the ladder, and I followed. Going down this ladder was much more difficult than going up, it seems. Every time I entered the guild, I had used my badge.

_Could have done that this time, too. Dang. _

I basically dropped down halfway to one of the rungs, and then bounced onto the ground. I tried to do so gracefully, but I don't really know how to softland. After an "oof" escaped me, I then had to go down the next one. Loudred seemed to be slightly confused, but I paid him no attention. I did it again, ending up on the bottom floor. Chatot was right there, and I almost landed on him.

Chatot made a "SQUAWK" sound in surprise, and glared at me.

"Sorry" I muttered "my mistake". Chatot just sighed. "You being the leader of a well know team, I had expected you would be more considerate of your actions, Caleb".

"Do not worry, Chatot. It should not happen again".

"I hope I can count on that" Chatot said. He did not mean anything by that, and he had no idea what was about to happen. That was all fine. he would be curious, but maybe Sarah and Nincada would explain everything. I nodded at him and walked away towards the large double doors that contained the guildmaster's room. With one paw, I shoved the left door open and walked inside. I almost got my tail trapped in the door, which probably would not have been so fun to deal with. Wigglytuff stood there, eyes wide open. He did not move at all. "Wigglytuff?" I asked.

Wigglytuff did not reply, just stared straight ahead, eyes wide open. He was sleeping again. This time, I was not about to face him directly. I walked around him and called his name, louder this time. He twitched. He did not make an incredible attack, so I returned to his field of view. "Wigglytuff? Are you awake?"

He suddenly seemed to focus on me. "Oh! Hi, Caleb!" he said cheerfully. I wondered how I planned to let him know I was leaving. I had not really planned it out, I thought it would take Palkia longer to find my exit. I had not really planned anything out. I would have to improvise.

"Hello, Wigglytuff. I wished to speak with you about the events today will bring" I told him. He just listened. "Today, I will journey alone to a place quite a distance away. When I reach there, I will find a doorway to another place. My home, specifically, where I was snatched unexpectedly from and found myself here. When I return to my home, well, it is extremely unlikely that I will return. It is extremely unlikely that there is a way to return at all".

Wigglytuff pouted. "Y-you're leaving?"

"I must" I told him "This is my only chance to go home. I'm sorry, Wigglytuff, but I must leave. If I do not… I will never make it home. Please, Wigglytuff, Understand that I have no other choice".

Wigglytuff brightened, much to my surprise. "It's alright, friend!" he said brightly "I know you need to get back to the human world!" So this guy knew that I had been human. Interesting. I guess he was smarter than he looked. Wigglytuff continued. "It's a shame that you could not stay longer, but this is your chance! It would be best for you to make the journey, so I wish you the best of luck!"

"Thank you, Wigglytuff. I do not want this to be public, but I assume people will ask questions…". Wigglytuff interrupted me before I could finish. "I can take care of everything, friend! Do not worry about it. Thank you for visiting me, Caleb". Was that the first time he used my name? No, I think it was the second.

"I should be thanking you, Wigglytuff. In fact, it is impossible to thank you enough. Now, I must take my leave. Goodbye, guildmaster Wigglytuff". After I said that, I turned around. I intended to walk right out. I half expected Wigglytuff to get a last word in, but he just watched me go. The door opened by the command of my paw, and then I was out. I barely noticed the ladders and the floors I visited on my way out. I exited the guild without difficulty. Now that I was out, Memories surfaced of the place I would never see again. They stuck with me, and I knew that I would remember the place for a long time.

With images of the past in my head now, I traveled back down the long staircase to where Palkia waited.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

_I need a plan. I need something. I have nothing right now. _

I paced back and forth, with that accursed Palkia looming over me as the giant dragon stood in the middle of the crossroads. I had no plan to keep Caleb here, with me. I wanted to, but how?

I would need to go to wherever this was going to happen and stop him. I would have to stop him right there, where I had my best chance.

"Hey, Palkia, Where exactly is this portal?" I asked the brute overshadowing me.

"**To the west of the lost wilderness, lies a cavern hidden in the rocks. Within the small cavern, I have opened the door for the human**" Palkia said. "Thank you" I said a little too quickly. Now, I needed a way there. I thought about it. Who could I possibly ask to help me stop him? I know I can't do it on my own. Who can I possibly get to help me stop Caleb?

_Wigglytuff is currently having a talk with Caleb. The guild members cannot help, at least not anybody I don't know. \_

_Servine would not dare betray Caleb. Neither would Mightyena. Unless…_

_Mightyena has that crush on me. If I can get him to help me, I can possibly stop Caleb. _

I smiled. I had my location. I had my plan. Now, I just had to get it started. I began to run off, not in the direction of the exit of treasure town, but deeper in.

"Sarah" Nincada muttered urgently into my ear "This is not the way to amp plains".

"I know"

"What are you doing, Sarah?" Nincada asked, worried now. I would have to shake him off at some point. Eventually, I ran into somebody. It was that little jigglypuff. "What do **you **want?" she asked crossly.

"I need to know where team Rush lives" I told her quickly. I would be short on time, I knew. I had to get this done. "Sarah" Nincada interjected "What are you doing?"

"Why should I tell you?" the increasingly annoying jigglypuff asked snidely. I scowled. "Because" I growled in annoyance "I need to have a little chat with Mightyena". Jigglypuff's bravado vanished in the wake of my dangerous glare. "I-I think they live in an alcove to the north of the main town" she said, and I immediately bolted.

"Sarah, you had better not be doing what I think you are doing" Nincada warned. What could the bug do about it, anyways?

I ran towards the north edge of town, finally reaching the places where pokemon made their homes. There were buildings, tents, burrows, and anything in between. Finally, a little entrance in a hill opened up in front of me. Bastiodon's footprints were visible, and there was of course a little board called a sign on the doorway simply saying: "Team Rush".

"Sarah, you cannot do this!" Nincada said. I angrily shook myself, dislodging him. "Sorry, Nincada, but I can, and I need to" I said, before disappearing inside to whatever awaited me.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

I looked at the entrance where Sarah had vanished. I would not go in, because it would do no good.

_What could I possibly do to prevent this?_

I considered my options. I could not stop Sarah without force, which I refused to do. I had no way of getting to the guild in time, and I would be slow getting to the town. I had very little options.

_Servine should still be in town. _

I needed to get to town. **Fast**.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I was inside, and glowing lights met me. Bastiodon being a steel type, he probably did not like the look of firelight. Instead, they had glowing spheres that looked like water pulses but with a glowing light inside. Bastiodon was gone, and so was Machoke. They would be on a job. Mightyena would not. I detected movement in the shadows to my right.

"Sarah?"

"Hello, Mightyena" I told him, maintaining my cheerfulness. He looked very cautious, and I would have to be careful here. I began: "Listen… I need your help".

"What with?" he asked immediately. He stepped into the light, slightly slouched, and he looked like he was in a little pain, but it did not look too bad. Mightyena would have gone a job today if Chimecho had not threatened him to stay off of work while he recovered from… whatever it was.

"There is a small cavern to the west of the Lost Wilderness. I need to get there" I told him. He stepped forward again, and looked me right in the eyes. "What could you possibly want to go near that dungeon for? It has no definite boundaries, and we may end up in it if it is so close" he warned. Now I really had to be careful.

"Listen… I need a favor. I can't do it alone, and it will be quite the journey" I explained without explaining. He just waited, and I realized that despite his crush on me, he was no idiot. "Caleb is travelling there. He intends to leave without even saying goodbye" I choked, putting partially fake sadness into my voice. "I want to see him again, but…"

"You mean to stop him" Mightyena interrupted me. I started, noting how quick he was in noticing the difficulty. " Please, Mightyena" I pleaded "i can't lose him".

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

"_I can't lose him"_

That was what she had said. I can't lose him. She was asking me to stop him.

_No. _

She was not just asking me to stop him, she was asking me to **betray **him.

Now, I grew angry, spurred by the power in my chest. "You would ask me to betray Caleb?" I asked harshly. Sarah recoiled, seeming surprised that I was not just bending to her will like some lovesick puppy. The dark energy fuelled anger helped.

She looked into my eyes, her adorable blue eyes standing out more than ever before. I felt a sense of longing. I tried to shake it. This was the future of my friend we were discussing, and Caleb would be beyond destroyed by failure here. How could I do that to him? I was supposed to remain loyal to him. Yet, here I was, hesitating to tell Sarah off because of some crush.

My heart was not with the program. I knew that Sarah would never love me. I knew that so deep it hurt. Yet, I really wanted to help her. I felt like I was fighting myself.

_I could not possibly betray Caleb. _

_But Sarah may be more inclined to like me if I try._

_It does not matter. I can't do this. _

_**Why not do it? There will be no other chance for Sarah to see you for what you are…**_

I felt powerful energy soar through my body with that thought. It was not entirely me. This energy fed off of dark thoughts, selfish decisions. If I refused, it would get worse. If I accepted, I would have to betray my friend.

_Unless…_

If I could pretend to help Sarah, and she would not go alone to this cavern. I could stop her. My chances with her would be destroyed, but they had never existed really. I could fulfill my hearts desire to go, to be with her, before I had to… Double cross her.

This was an extremely difficult decision. Yet, there was only one option to help Caleb the most.

"Yes" I told her, and she brightened immediately. "Yes, I will help you" I lied.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I reached Palkia at the bottom of the large staircase. Palkia was certainly patient, as he had seemingly not moved a single muscle. "I am prepared for the journey" I told him. The massive dragon looked down at me, his aura making the air around him pressurize like he had some sort of gravitational field.

"**We are only capable of transporting halfway to the cavern we must reach. This is due to the spacial distortion I create when I fly. Any closer than halfway, and the portal will be affected and may become too dangerous for passage. Permanently**" He rumbled. Again, his mouth did not move, but his voice echoed in my mind, and resonated everywhere. "That is fine" I told him "I am capable of making a journey". Palkia, in response, took one, giant step towards me.

**BOOOM…**

Palkia now stood above me, and his power began to fill the air as he began to prepare to fly. Once again, I felt like I was losing my body completely as my energy became a part of the energy enveloping Palkia.

With a mighty **SHOOOM**, we soared into the sky.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

Me and Mightyena raced through the town, racing against the clock now. I hoped that Palkia was not there still. If Caleb was on his way already, there would not be a large white and pink obstacle in the way. While we went towards the crossroads, I thought about the previous conversation.

"_You would ask me to betray Caleb?" _Mightyena had asked. He had been angry. Very angry. Yet, he appeared to change his mind after a time of thought. I guess he really did love me **that **much. I shuddered at the thought. I just felt nothing for the guy. Maybe he understood that, maybe he did not. All I knew was that I had a chance of stopping the love of my life from leaving forever.

Palkia no longer dwarfed the trees in the area, what with him being gone and all. Caleb would be on his way, and we needed to run along. "Mightyena, is there a way to move faster?" I asked desperately, remembering now Palkia's flying/teleporting powers.

"Of course" Mightyena answered, noticeably panting. He skidded to a halt, reaching into that bag of his. He yanked out two ugly pink scarves. he tossed one to me as I skidded to a halt next to him. He tossed me one while yanking one over his head. They were already tied. I did the same, having some trouble and wasting precious moments getting the ugly think around my horn. Thankfully, I did not cut the thing apart.

As soon as the thing was on, My vision seemed to zoom a bit, the stuff in the side of my vision became elongated and blurred. I could see stuff directly in front of me better, however. This change in vision made me feel a bit weird, and the idea of this side effect did not sit well with me, but I knew immediately that this would make me almost three times faster. Mightyena nodded to me, looking absolutely ridiculous with that ugly pink scarf. "Suits you" he grunted, before starting to run again.

I followed him. We started off slowly, but I felt my legs moving faster over time. We shot around the corner of the intersection and towards the plains that would eventually lead to the forests, then the mountains, then, hopefully, the lost wilderness. Things blurred by at astonishing speeds, though I worried about shooting through the tall grass that I could not see through, but it turned out to be no problem.

My legs moved practically on their own. I just had to start moving, and then I was on my way. If I wanted to stop, my legs skidded to a halt just about automatically. This ugly scarf was **awesome**.

The plains disappeared behind us, and I looked over at Mightyena, who had somehow stayed with me during the period where I could not see him. His legs blurred underneath him as he matched my speed. Looking down, my legs were blurring as well, just a blur of red and pink underneath me. Looking back up, the mountains were visible. We were on our way.

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

**One Hour Later…**

I walked around in the guild, trying to find the tangela twins. They seemed to just not be there. I wondered if they were back in town.

_If this keeps up, we won't be able to complete the mission. _

i had been here for half an hour, just looking for the two of them. Heck, I even check the room where we had slept as guild trainees. It was empty. I had checked the waterfall room, which the two of them liked. Not there either. Chatot said he had not seen them. Finally, I checked with loudred and confirmed that they had not come inside. They could have teleported in with the help of a badge. Now that I thought about it, **I **had that badge, so they could not do that. Sighing, I launched myself up the ladders, one floor at a time until I reached the top floor and left.

I began the trek towards Treasure Town. I had been all over the place this last hour, and at no point had I stayed in the same spot for long. Upon reaching treasure town, I looked left and right at the shops around the place. Treasure town was growing steadily, to the point where some other types of shops would be available soon. Places to order food, maybe, like Spinda's cafe. Those may begin to pop up in the next few years as the town grew. It was growing over time.

As I looked left to right and back to left once again, I had noticed the large quantity of new pokemon in the area. They were pokemon who had come early for the tournament in four weeks, teams from different regions. That team I had followed Layla to had lived here for a while, but had lived in a rather small continent to the east beforehand, which was probably why such an inexperienced team had managed to bypass the guild treatment. That continent had no real guild, after all. Teams just signed up and got jobs there. Similar to the larger continent to the north that did the same.

There was one tangela, but I dismissed it. My teammates never separated. Ever. I kept walking, almost getting brushed by a nidorino, which would have poisoned me with his horn if I had not been careful. A butterfree, a beedrill, a dustox and a venomoth fluttered together and talked, causing the whole crowd of pokemon to skirt around them and avoid their different spores. all sorts of powders floated around the pokemon, so I avoided them with extreme caution. Within a week, this place would be extremely crowded.

My tangela were nowhere to be found. I reached Electivire's Link Shop.

"Have you seen my tangela partners?" I asked the large electric types.

"I have not, Servine. Though, somebody else was looking for you. A small bug type, called himself Nincada, I think".

Nincada was looking for me? I wondered why. Maybe the tangela were helping him find me.

After another half hour of searching, I came up with nothing, having checked on the intense amount of places they could be in. I walked by a building being constructed, with the help of some pokemon called gurderrs. Lots of timburrs were there as well. They were building this large building that would serve as the home for many of the challengers. Many of these would have to be built, so it was good that these pokemon were good at their jobs.

Now I was looking for Nincada as well. I thought that would increase my chances of finding **somebody**.

After fifteen more minutes, I was losing hope of finding them quickly. I had expected a quicker transition to work today.

"Servine!" squeaked a voice behind me that I recognized.

Nincada was there, seeming to have just popped out of the ground. I was going to ask him what was so urgent, but we were interrupted. "Servine!" a deeper voice sounded. Two voices actually, at the same time.

"Tangela! I have been looking for you!" I said, excited now.

_What are the odds?_

Nincada shattered the happy reunion immediately. "Servine!" he squeaked loudly "This is of the utmost importance! Palkia came for Caleb! They are going to the lost wilderness!"

I looked at the little guy, realizing what that meant. "Good for him!" I exclaimed.

"Sarah is following them! And fast, too!"

"WHAT!?" I shrieked "And I took my eyes off of her for two hours! The lost wilderness is where they're going?!"

"To the west of it, in a small cavern" Nincada told me. I whirled around towards Kangaskhan storage. "You three, tell the guildmaster about this!"

"Where will you go?" Nincada asked, clearly confused.

"I am going in direct pursuit" I growled, and then I sprinted towards Kangaskhan storage. I would need a specific item if I was going to catch them after a two hour head start, especially if they had the same item, which I was certain they did.

"**Kangaskhan**!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as I skidded to a stop right in front of her store, much to the surprise of Kangaskhan herself. "Wh-what can I do for you, sweetie?" she asked.

"**I need that speed band, STAT!" **I exclaimed. Kangaskhan sensed the situation, and she quickly rushed inside, her large feet pounding the ground. I stood there, impatiently looking about. I needed that thing **now**.

"Here you go, Sweetie" Kangaskhan said, tossing it to me. I immediately slipped it around my neck as fast as I could. "Gotta go!" I shouted as my vision zoomed in a bit, and my peripheral vision blurred and stretched. I knew it was working, and I immediately turned and ran back. I caught up to Nincada and the Tangela in one minute. I allowed myself to stop for a moment to nod to them before I raced off in pursuit of Sarah.

Leaving the town was easy for me. If Sarah was really using a speed band, she needed someone to give it to her. That somebody would be Mightyena, I assumed. Of course she would try to use his love for her. Maybe Mightyena had a plan of stopping her, but if he failed, he will have led Sarah straight to Caleb. I shot down the hill towards the plains.

I needed to move much faster than this if Sarah was to be stopped, her having an hour head start on me forced me to do something I may regret later. I started using quick attack. With the boost from the band I wore, My quick attack exponentially grew. I could not even see where I was going, but I had to do my best. The band would keep me moving, I would automatically step correctly, I would not trip. Using quick attack would drain my energy, but I had to try.

The plains were gone within minutes. The grass vanished, allowing me to see where I was going for a bit. I really could only see a blur at all, but I knew where I was in general because of the color of my surroundings. I have only done this once before, and I did worry about how my body would handle extensive use. My guess was: not well.

I was already breathing with some difficulty, and I guessed that I could not sue quick attack for the entire time. I may even need to rest at some point.

_What if I don't have the strength to stop Sarah when I get there?_

I shook that off. I would just have to try. I could only try. Maybe she will be tired as well. I would be her first time using a speed band, at any rate. I could only hope. As I barreled across the land, I could mostly think only about how I had promised to stop Sarah from stopping Caleb. I had let the red absol out of my sight just long enough for her to grab Mightyena, two speed bands, and run off for Caleb. I shook my head. How did I know that Mightyena was with her? She had speed bands, but who would actually be able to give her that? Me, Mightyena, Jake, some other teams. Nobody who did not know her would never give away speed bands. Jake would not give her one. Mightyena was the only choice.

Either he went along with it with the intention of betraying Sarah, or he had been seduced by his predating love for her, and was actually going to help her stop Caleb. If he had stayed he would be betraying both Sarah and possibly Caleb if Sarah got to Caleb first anyway. He could not possibly do that, but he now had to choose one person to betray and that could not possibly be a good thing for him. Mightyena as a species are extremely central on loyalty. If Mightyena could not decide, Sarah would do it without his help. The only thing she really needed was that speed band. I hoped Mightyena would choose to help Caleb, and I believe he did.

_Do not rule anything out. Just move ahead. _

And so I did. I approached the mountains. At the speed I have been going, racing through the apple forest and oran forest would have been suicide, so I was forced to skirt around them. I looked back. I had grasses and rocks flying behind me, my own personal vacuum. Just like Rayquaza. The speed band turned my quick attack into an impressive extremespeed. I could not do that forever, though. I already felt my legs tiring out. I would have to take a rest somewhere in the mountains, and I hoped that Sarah and Mightyena were doing that as well.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

We raced through the mountains now. We raced over the mountaintops because the pass we took had ended about six miles in. However, thanks to the impressive speed bands we wore, our paws somehow found all sorts of footholds. Soon however, we would tire and have to rest. I hoped that we had made good time.

The pain in my body had grown intense over the last few hours. I longed to rest, but Sarah was moving on. Sarah looked tired, but not tired enough to merit a rest. It would seem odd to her. She seemed not to notice my condition much, which surprised me. Sarah in most cases displayed some decent abilities when it came to noticing changes in people. Caleb could do that too, but Sarah showed herself to do it on a few occasions. I guess she had solidified me as a selfish enemy, and that made me look like I had not changed at all in her eyes. She was very judgemental. What did I see in her?

_Better figure that out before I make any moves. _

I was being ridiculous. Sarah would never love me. I felt longing with her, however, and I really wanted to know why. Caleb, he may be able to tell me. He has not yet, but I imagine that is because I did not ask. Caleb had an answer for everything.

_A shame he's leaving…_

I shook my head. This is what Caleb had warned about. Pain on our part was the only possible result of his leaving, and he knew it. That was why he had initially gone trying to alienate himself from everyone else, especially Sarah. Now, though, we were his friends, and it would hurt so bad when he left. I knew why he did. I related to his determination of loyalty. He would not dare betray his family. He had a chance to go back, and if Sarah was kept in check, he would. I owed Caleb my new lifestyle, and our new friendship.

_A shame Sarah cannot see the same about me. _

What was there to see about me? Caleb had seen 'who I was inside'. What does that mean? Caleb never clarified. I was not funny. I was not clever. I was not particularly smart. I was fast, strong, good at fighting. What was good about me?

Pain flared in my body, causing me to gasp. It was particularly bad today, of all days. Why can this madness not end? I don't know what I would be without this pain in me anymore. Would I become the person I was before?

_No, This energy makes me worse than I should be. I changed for the better, and if I lost this energy, things could only get better. _

My fighting would certainly improve if I did not have a pain in my chest every day. My whole body, really, was in pain, but my chest held most of it. Why was that? I had so many questions, and chances were none of them would be answered without Caleb. I suddenly thought about something.

_How will I get past this without Caleb available to diagnose it?_

If Caleb left, this would get worse. Not being able to say anything, I worried that no pokemon could figure out the extent of my illness. Furthermore, being a dark type, no psychic could enter my mind and figure out what was wrong.

_I just realized that being a dark type sucks. _

If only I could have been any other type, then a psychic could help. I gritted my teeth in frustration, and growled. The soft sound was whipped away in the wind thankfully, so Sarah did not hear it.

We reached another peak and lept off. Several seconds of just being in open air made me feel weightless, and then we were on solid ground again. Thankfully, though there were a lot of boulders here, we were able to bound from boulder to boulder thanks to the speed bands. We would feel woozy after we took them off, however. We would need to take them off the moment we stopped. Upcoming was a place to stop, it turned out.

"We need to rest!" I called to Sarah as we bounded along. "Come with me!"

Sarah complied reluctantly, realizing that she could not do her job properly without me. I was heading towards another mountain. This one had a strangely shaped peak. I had only been once, and the inhabitants would not have fond memories of me. I forced this energy down. Maybe I could act better than last time. Maybe this time I would not get shot off the mountain by a solarbeam.

We reached the base of the mountain, which bordered the base of the one we had just crossed. With little resistance, we began our quick journey up. Racing over obstacles and dodging trees that dotted the landscape, we began to near the peak after about fifteen minutes, we were travelling that fast.

_For ages I wondered about the amount of magic necessary to make this thing work. To guide us effortlessly over obstacles, to allow us to run for extended periods of time. _

"_It all makes me wonder like there are such things as problems in this world at all" _Caleb had said. He was absolutely right. With things like this, why was the world not absolutely perfect? It almost was, if not for outlaws. Outlaws made no sense, now that I thought about it. Caleb had told me that the pancham they had 'battled' had not even been threatening. There had been a mistake. I wondered now how many other outlaws were like that. I wondered why those that were not like that turned to stealing.

I shook that off as we neared our destination at impressive speeds. I would figure it out later. I owed that to Caleb, but I had to focus on not getting solarbeamed again.

We made a single, final leap and flew into a grassy clearing, right there on the top of a tall mountain. There were houses, and the place was warmer. I stopped over time, not wanting to take out the nice flowers. Slowing to less than immense speed, I eventually came to a stop with Sarah next to me. I reached a paw up and ripped the scarf right off.

Instantly, my vision snapped back to normal, and I felt my legs suddenly lose all energy. I almost collapsed. I turned to check on Sarah. She was having difficulty getting her's off due to her horn. I walked forward as fast as my legs would let me and tried to help her.

"Don't bother" she snapped at me.

"Shut up" I told her "You'll get hurt wearing that for too much longer".

At that, she let me near her. She seemed surprised that I was being harsh with her this time, but I knew she would be thinking 'i knew it' later. I got the band off of her horn with some difficulty, and then dropped it on the ground.

"There… There we go…" I said, before I suddenly buckled.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

I fell over right with Mightyena. I had not realized what extended use of that speed band would do to me. After crashing on the ground, I rested for a moment. Hopefully, nobody would steal our speed bands. We were not going anywhere for a while. Thankfully, Mightyena had found us a half decent spot to rest. It was warm, it was grassy, and I think it was actually a meadow.

"Who are you?" a small voice asked. I had just enough energy to move my head and see a bunch of white and green, plus some flowers. "Huh?" I asked. My vision was back to normal. Whatever was in front of me stepped back. I could make out a small face now. It had small green eyes and a tiny snout. A small, triangular black nose was visible on the end of the snout. It had flowers on the sides of it's face, with leaves coming out from them. It's back appeared to have grass on it. it's small paws made little impact on the ground.

The whole package was about eight inches tall.

"Oh.. Hi there. Me and my… my teammate were just in need of some rest" I told her, feeling a bit breathless. The small pokemon looked from me to Mightyena, who was starting to stand again. Not to be outdone, I tried to do so as well.

"_Turns out I am to be outdone" _I thought, as I sank back to the ground. "Him?" the pokemon asked. "Yeah" I told her.

"And what exactly bring you here, **Mightyena**?" the pokemon asked, clear hostility in her voice.

I looked at Mightyena. "You manage to piss the pokemon here off as well?" I asked brutally. Mightyena looked at the ground. "About three months ago" he muttered "I did something i'm not proud of now. Yeah, I made them angry".

The pokemon laughed. "Angry?" she laughed "more than angry. You won yourself a one way trip down the mountain! I ought to do it again, too!"

"Yeah, you ought to" Mightyena said "But we need rest right now. By morning, we will leave, once we have been revitalized. Using speed bands can get tiring" he said. He then picked up the bands, oblivious to the pokemon's gaze. Her expression was unreadable. He picked up both bands one at a time, and put them in one of the bags on his person.

The pokemon laughed, this time with humor. Mightyena and I looked at her like she was crazy. "Oh, stop worrying. We all forgave you months ago!" she said happily. Mightyena stopped cold. "Hang on, what?" he asked "How can you forgive me?"

_Good question. What did he do again?_

"Oh, you had some issues sure" she said conversationally "however, it was so long ago!". Wait a minute. Did Mightyena not say 'months'? That was a long time for these pokemon?

Mightyena was having similar thoughts. "It was only three months ago" he said. The pokemon giggled now. "Oh, that doesn't matter!" she said. At our confusion, she said "I can tell you changed quite a bit! Was it this girl here?"

Hang on, how did I become part of this? "Hang on a second…" I muttered before Mightyena said "Sarah was part of it, yes". "Don't start that!" I snapped at him. the pokemon looked between us, and said "uh-oh, doesn't look like she feels the same".

"You bet I don't!" I snapped at her. She seemed surprised. Mightyena suddenly hissed "No, don't make her mad". He looked somewhat frightened. What had happened to Mightyena of all people to make him afraid of this little thing?

"oh, it's fine, Mightyena. You two can stay here as long as you need to!" she said. Mightyena blinked in confusion. Then he made an attempt to smile. "Thank you, Shaymin" he said.

Something crazy happened when Mightyena said that. A bunch of flowers bloomed on her grass like back, just popping into existence. I stared at the pokemon, wondering what that was about.

'Shaymin' nodded her tiny, nonthreatening head that apparently scared Mightyena for some reason. Then, she left, walking through the meadow towards the buildings. Other shaymin were barely visible in the taller grass.

Mightyena told me that we needed to rest until tomorrow. I told him that was ridiculous, but he gave me a slightly annoyed look and told me off for being so ready to hurt myself. He was getting colder again, I noticed. I gave him a cross look, but it was mostly because I hated the fact that he was right. I was not going anywhere at the moment.

_We are so close. More than halfway. Caleb, you cannot get away!_

How did I know he was not already gone? I did not. I just had to hope.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

We walked slowly along. Night was approaching. We had to walk because Palkia was not a runner, and flying could cause spacial distortions that would make the passage dangerous. We were somewhere near the forgotten woods, according to Palkia. We would have to walk tomorrow, and we may not get there until the sun was almost set. We would have to walk almost the entire day. Right now, Palkia would soon tell me to rest for the rest of the day tomorrow. I would oblige. I was feeling somewhat in a hurry, but I shoved it down.

When I slept tonight, I wondered if I would dream differently with Palkia so close. Probably not, but things were weird around the big pink dragon. For starters, his very presence made the air seem dense, and if I walked to close, it was almost like walking in water. We got jumped by some random pokemon who proclaimed himself a legendary outlaw who was going to take all my things. I had been walking ahead, and the goofball had apparently noticed neither the footsteps clearly audible of Palkia, or see the giant dragon behind me. Palkia fixed that. His lustrous orb in one hand, a water pulse three times my size in the other. It would normally be my size, but the awesome power of the orb tripled it's power and size. He obliterated the spot where the unsuspecting pokemon was standing, and he was just smoking on the other end of the area. I had made certain he was out cold before we continued.

_Some 'legendary outlaw'. _

After that experience, I began to think about why some pokemon were outlaws. It certainly seemed to make them rather known and famous. This guy had been in it for the fame. would others be?

It did not matter to me anymore. I was going home. Why did I care about what this world was about anymore?

"**We will stop here**" Palkia rumbled. He just stopped walking. He had chosen a clearing of sorts surrounded by mountains. Realizing we were not going anywhere, I walked over to a rock and slept against it. My dreams consisted of the same, and more of the same. Training Riley, playing with the kids, ETC.

I never wanted to wake up.

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

**Twenty minutes after Servine's departure…**

"So Sarah and Mightyena have gone after Caleb" Wigglytuff repeated "and Servine had gone after them?"

"That's it" I told him. Chatot was in the room, looking troubled. "I thought it had been weird when he told me I need never worry about him causing trouble again" he muttered. Wigglytuff did not look so thoughtful but his expression never changed anyways.

"Chatot, please call team Meditate here" the guildmaster said. Chatot squawked. "What? Guildmaster, what does this mean?" he asked worriedly.

"it means" Wigglytuff said "That we need to move quickly if Caleb is to make it home without interruption. Please, go fetch team Meditate immediately". "Y-yes sir" Chatot stammered before fluttering off, the tangela opening the door for him. I had never seen Wigglytuff give a direct order. Wigglytuff really wanted to help Caleb. I felt good about that, but what was this team Meditate? How did Wigglytuff plan to get there? Unless it was the same concept. Perhaps team meditate had a way.

After about thirty minutes, Chatot flew back in. "I notified them, guildmaster" he gasped, having flown as fast as he could "They will be here shortly".

"Thank you, chatot" Wigglytuff said. Twenty seconds of silence followed before I was scared half to death by somebody new saying "What did you need, guildmaster?"

Four pokemon stood there. two kadabra, a kirlia and a medicham. The medicham had been the one to speak. "We must get to a cavern west of the lost wilderness" Wigglytuff said "Chimecho, Chatot, These three pokemon here, and myself".

"This must be serious if the great and powerful Wigglytuff is going. For such a group, it may take a long time to build enough psychic energy for a mass teleport. I assume Chimecho will assist us?"

"Chimecho will try to lend your team a hand, though she does not know teleport" Chatot said. He did not look happy about getting involved, but it was clearly serious that this be done. I felt a strange feeling as I realized that the enemy was Sarah, my teammate. However, Caleb needed to get home. So, I would not be outspoken about that.

"How long will it take to prepare?" Wigglytuff asked. His voice was high pitched and happy, but he was clearly serious about this.

"With such a large group, maybe a day and a half" Medicham replied.

_A day and a half? That's sunset. __**of the next day!**_ _We may be too late!_

"Do so as quickly as possible please" Chatot chirped "as for the rest of you, no wandering off. You are relieved from todays duties, on order of the guildmaster".

The tangela shook themselves, and then just stayed put. I scuttled over to Wigglytuff. "Thank you" I said. Wigglytuff looked down at me. "Of course!" he exclaimed, all smiles again. "Anything for a friend!" he finished.

_Sunset on the next day… Will we be too late?_

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

**Present…**

It was night. Stars were out. My band was off and away, my entire body aching, practically screaming for rest. Yet, I walked on. I could not stop. I had to get to the cave before Sarah and Mightyena did, or even before Caleb did. I had to get there.

_I have to get there… First. I must get there first. _

I was putting my body through a lot doing this, but I did not care. Tomorrow, or today if midnight had passed, was Caleb's most important day. If I missed it, he may fail. If I missed it, Sarah might win.

_I can't let that happen… I can't…_

After taking the band off, my body had just given up for an hour. Using quick attack and that band had been too much, but now I was just about halfway. With luck, I could use the band alone tomorrow.

_I need to rest if I want the band to be usable in the morning. But, what if I don't make enough progress?_

My body decided for me. I crashed right there, and saw stars.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

I woke up slowly. It seemed that I had been allowed a period of extra rest. My time with Riley and the kids had been splendid. Stories had been invented, all of us relaxed, even Riley. For a while, I endured trial by children, but eventually even they calmed down. We just laid by the lake and talked, me making up stories, Riley just enjoying the view, not really talking. His shooting sunglasses were constantly on now, and he only moved them to get a better look at things, like the reverse of a person wearing regular glasses.

Now, I was back in the real world. Well, **a **real world. My old world was very real, too. The morning sun… It was halfway to it's full height.

_Halfway to it's full height. _

"Gah!" I barked as I shot to my feet. Palkia stood in the exact same spot he had been. I guess giant godly pink dragons don't need sleep. "You did not wake me up!?" I demanded.

"**You required rest, human**" Palkia said "**You would be unfit for the full trip if you had awoken too soon**"

As much as I hated that, it made sense. "I apologize" I told him "I suppose that I am simply in a hurry. My attitude is unnecessary". Palkia looked down at me. "**An apology? I have not heard such an apology from a common pokemon before, much less a human. You impress me, human absol**".

_I just received a compliment from Palkia. _

The compliment was about my character. Never once have I really considered who I was as a person. All sorts of people tell me I am a good person. What is a good person? I am informed of that by adults who see me do a 'good' deed. What is a good deed? Who decides that? Society, that's who. It matters what people think, because that is what expectations are built on. It was people who decided what as appropriate, what was not. Here, the concept of what was good was similar to my home. Good is built on public opinion. Yet, some people say that what people think of you does not matter. It does. It really does, because what society believes is good is what is defined as good.

_Most people would marvel at the compliment itself, not analyze it. _

Palkia thought that being able to apologize for my mistakes was admirable. You don't hear such an understanding apology that often. A lot of people would mutter 'sorry' and move on, not really paying attention to what was wrong. Some were not like that. Some people and some pokemon really did think about what they had done wrong. In Palkia's eyes, this was a 'good' trait. Me, well, I avoid having an opinion about the topic. I try to avoid it at all costs, actually. By remaining neutral, I have made the best decisions.

_The 'best' decisions. _

'Best' was opinionated. So was 'good', 'bad', 'evil', 'crazy' ETC. Not even I can avoid having opinions. If someone had been raised to believe that was we thought of as 'evil' was instead 'good', and some people were raised like that in the human world. Some people are 'crazy', and they believe that we are crazy. So who's crazy?

_Personally, I think we all are for not just living our lives like we could do. Avoiding an opinion on things would lead to proper cooperation, livelihood. Humans, we are not built for that. Emotion is a given for us, and so neutrality cannot be attained. _

The same is true for Pokemon, though they seem not to be as bad as humanity when it comes to conflicts. Humans have brutal wars with thousands of casualties. Pokemon have rather minor scuffles that result in the stronger pokemon being pronounced the winner. It sounds a lot like humanity. Yet, nobody dies. Pokemon are practically built not to die.

"We should head out" I said, throwing away those thoughts "if we plan on arriving by sunset".

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

I awoke, facing the sky. I felt… Fine. My body was in good shape. My mind, however, was racing after I managed to remember what I was doing. Rocks dug into my skin. I jumped up, viewing my chosen place of rest, noting how many rocks there were, and how **cold **it was.

_Not chosen. I just fell asleep on my feet. _

Immediately, I knew what I had to do. Grabbing the band in the bag over my shoulder, I produced my speed band. I hesitated to put it on, and I knew that using quick attack would be a mistake this time, but I could only hope that I had made enough time.

I slipped on the band, and took off.

_Please don't let me be late. _

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

I had been particularly worried about what was about to go down. That shaymin, she was the very one I had wrong. I could not imagine her forgiving me. Last time, she and her friends had blasted me with a combined solarbeam that threw me right off of the mountain.

Somehow, they had in fact forgiven me. My gratitude at that had made a bunch of flowers to blossom on Shaymin's back. Gratitude was a powerful force for their kind. It makes them stronger.

Now, Sarah and I raced along the mountains again. We were making decent time, but we could not possibly make it until about an hour before sundown. To make time, We had gone straight over several mountains. These really did not count as mountains, considering how tall sky peak is, but I did not really care too much about the definition of mountain.

So we raced on. I would look around once or twice as we moved along, but there was not much of a point, considering how my vision was stretched. I could not identify a threat properly even if I wanted to.

_This energy is extremely painful. I had gotten rid of it this morning, right? Why am I still in pain? _

Sarah seemed not to notice my panting. My weariness. What she did notice was that I was not moving as fast as I could. "Hurry up!" she barked at me, and I bit back a response. Unnatural anger surged through me. I ignored it as best as I could.

_We will reach the place in time. We should at any rate, if he is not already gone. _

⻤ Nincada's POV ⻤

Team Meditate stood in a circle, gathering psychic energy for the mass teleport. Chimecho had helped as much as she could, but she was not capable of using teleport. She rested, attached to the roof. The entire group was ready save Chatot. With Wigglytuff's permission, Chatot decided to stay behind and keep the guild functioning.

We waited for several hours. It was about noon, when a certain raichu walked in on the proceedings.

"What's going on?" he asked. Swampert came down the ladder, four outlaws in tow. They were all restrained. Behind the group came Magnezone, the police chief, with his magneton partners. "T-thank you for apprehending the designated outlaws-s" Magnezone warbled. "W-we appreciate your assistance-e!" Magnezone and the magneton then led the group away. Four outlaws. That was how many team Thunderwave had taken down. **By noon**.

"We are going in pursuit of Sarah, who had gone after Caleb" I told him. "Caleb had been contacted by Palkia, and now Caleb goes to the place where he will exit this world. Sarah, however, intends to stop him. Servine is following Sarah right now, but the rest of us will be teleported there".

"I want to go, too" Jake said instantly. Nine heads turned to look at him. "I want to help him get home, too".

"Sure thing, friend!" Wigglytuff said joyfully. Now the psychic team turned to make annoyed faces at the guldmaster, who gleefully ignored them. "With Chimecho's assistance" Medicham muttered "we cut down on our time to prepare the energy. With these two coming, we are back at sundown".

"Oh, it's alright!" Wigglytuff said. How did he know that?

"I can stay behind. Will that help?" Swampert asked. Jake turned to him. "Are you sure?" he questioned.

"Caleb is your friend and colleague" Swampert replied "I will slow us down. Please continue without me".

"Very well" Medicham and Jake said at the same time. Medicham went back to his job of building psychic energy. Jake started talking with Swampert and me. Discussion with Jake turned out to be rather time consuming. He wanted to know every detail of what happened. I could only provide so much.

_I hope we can get there in time. _

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

**Near sundown…**

"That's them" I whispered. Mightyena looked down at the two forms walking along. One, the massive Palkia. The other, Caleb. "We can bypass them" he whispered back.

"Why not confront him now?" I asked, extremely impatient.

"Because Palkia will knock us out in an instant" he growled at me. "Palkia can't fit in a cave, Sarah. We need to get there first".

_I hate it when he makes sense. _

"Fine" I muttered "but let's give Palkia a wide berth".

"Yeah…" he answered. The mightyena was breathing heavily. How was he so tired? had he actually been using the speed band, or was he just tired in general?

_Weakling…_

Why was I so hostile towards the furry oaf? I guess I just hold a slight grudge on him from when we first met. It's not like he improved as much as Caleb seems to think. So he was acting like a massive prick. what else was new?

"Let's go".

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

**One hour later…**

It was almost sundown. Maybe another half hour, and the sky would turn orange. "Is that it?" I asked Palkia, looking at a tiny black spot in the rocks. "**Yes**" Palkia answered "**This entrance is far too small for me to enter. I must take a different path than you will. You will enter there. It may take you several minutes to get there. I approximate twenty**" he said. Before I could answer, he began to lumber away more to the west. Maybe there was a better way for him over there. I imagine that Palkia would know what he was doing. With one final look at the large dragon, I began my walk forward.

_Home…_

* * *

**So i have to be perfectly honest here. This chapter has been done for about five days. I have not found a decent time to upload it until now. **

**Jango: You mean you were too lazy to. **

**Me: Shut up, Jango. **

**Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The next one is well on the way. It should get uploaded in about two days. If you enjoyed, and wish to receive updates via email, go ahead and hit that 'follow' button! If you have something to say about it, please review!**

**If you have character bios for me, Please send them to my Personal Message inbox within the site. Thank you all very much for any contributions to the future of the story, and thank you all very much for any ideas, comments, and feedback you have. I appreciate it all. Thank you. **

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

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**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

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	22. Chapter Twenty Two: The Shadow

**Climax time!**

**I personally enjoy this quite a bit. But instead of taking my word for it, read it yourself! **

**Ah, crap. Hyperjade is coming already to set it up. Well i'd better not get caught here!**

**-Jango**

* * *

**Chapter 22: The Shadow**

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

The sun was setting. We stood in a large room. The room in the beginning of the cavern had been nothing special. This time, however, we were in a much larger room. An opening in the side of the cavern showed the sea, and would soon show a beautiful sunset. The main spectacle, however, was the massive tear in the very air, near the middle of the room but slightly off center. It looked like a massive lightning bolt, this tear. It glowed a brilliant pink, the same pink as Palkia. When Caleb stepped through this, he would find himself back in the human world.

"We don't have much time" Sarah proclaimed. She began the trek back through the hall that would lead back to the first room. I hoped that Caleb might find a different way in that we did. The entrance we had found was too small for Palkia, after all.

As we walked, I felt the energy get worse. I had to get rid of it. **Now**. Sarah was not looking at me. She did not use her absol sense often. Now was a great chance to do this. I shook myself. I imagined the energy leaving my body, poisoning something else, namely the ground. Let it die instead of me.

Nothing happened.

_Nothing happened!_

What was wrong? The energy did not leave? I was panicking now. What was wrong? Why could I not get rid of it?

"Sarah, are you using your absol sense?" I asked, panicking. She turned. "No, I wasn't. Why?" "N-no reason" I heard myself say. I wanted to say 'i'm in serious danger', but I could not. **Again**. My breathing sped up. I was ready to run out of there.

Suddenly, I became angry. Angry at Sarah. Angry at the entire situation. Why had I decided to help Sarah? Why would I do that? I did it because I thought I could stop her myself. in my condition, who was I kidding? Myself, that's who. I messed up big time, giving Sarah the means to come here. Now, I had promised Sarah that I would betray Caleb, while inwardly promising myself I would betray Sarah. Why? It was because I had no other real choice, that's why. If Sarah had gotten to Caleb without me, I would effectively have betrayed both of them. This choice was stupid. Ridiculous. I had to get out of here.

_The pain… It won't stop growing…_

I was in a lot of pain right now. I shivered while we walked. Why was I still even walking? Why was I acting like I was not in pain?

_Because whatever this is, it stops me from doing so. It stops me from talking or acting out the problem. What if this kills me?_

That echoed in my head. 'What if this kills me' I had thought. Now I was beyond terrified. Now, I had no doubt that this would eventually kill me if nothing was done. As fear for my life emerged, the pain in my chest tripled. That was it for me. I made it barely into the first room. There was just too much agony within my body to keep myself on my feet. My breathing heavy, I collapsed.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

I heard heavy, ragged breathing coming from Mightyena. I turned, ready to tell him to be quiet, but instead watched in confusion as he collapsed right there, Gasping in pain. This was not a fake pain he showed. It was very very real. I could feel the danger surrounding him. it rolled off of him like a thunderstorm. My eyes widened as I watched.

"Mightyena, what's wrong?" I asked. He groaned. "P-pain…" he growled. His body convulsed. I went back to him now. Shamefully, I almost hesitated. "Mightyena!" I cried into his ear "What is happening to you!?".

"I-i can't say!" he cried out. When I gave him a confused and slightly scared look, he continued. "I literally can't say anything! This- this-. I can't…"

How could I possibly help? I had no idea. I could not heal him. I had no way to make him feel better. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked, panicking now. Mightyena was not able to say it. When he tried to say something, he was cut off. He meant what he said.

_He physically can't tell me what is wrong. How am I supposed to deal with that?_

Suddenly, he bolted to his feet. His eyes, they had so much fear in there. His was shivering, spasming. "Gah!" he cried out, and then he was clearly in so much pain. I could do nothing. Nothing but watch.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

I had shot to my feet, I realized. I had not tried to do that. My body… It had moved on it's own. "Gah!" I cried, feeling my body spasm involuntarily. Pain exploded, ten times as painful as before. I was shouting in pain now. What was happening? Sarah was absolutely no help, but what could she do?

I realized something, among spikes of pain. I no longer felt any anger. Was that phase over? Would I be able to be normal again? At the same time, Sarah was not as hostile, actually bothering to ask me what was wrong.

"**GAAAAHH!**" I screamed as my muscles spasmed again. I realized something. I looked down, mustering all my will to look at what was happening. My muscles…

_What the hell?!_

I watched in horror as they seemed to bulge in my skin. They were clearly defined. I suddenly had a realization.

_This energy is changing me. what is it doing?_

Suddenly, I realized the danger Sarah was in. This energy, it created feelings of anger, jealousy, and otherwise bad emotions. If it could do that, could it do more? This was clearly the next stage of this horrible affliction. Could it change me?

The energy in my body roared an answer, as my body experienced a terrible physical pain. I screamed out loud, but my legs were locked. Sarah was still right there, still looking terrified. I had to warn her. I had to get her out of here, **right now**.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

"**RUN!**" Mightyena suddenly bellowed at me. I looked on in fear and confusion. What did he mean, 'run'? "Sarah, you must- **aaarghh**… Get out of here!" he shouted. His muscles convulsed. Then, to my horror, they bulged within the skin, becoming clearly visible. Mightyena howled in pain. "Why are you standing there?!" he cried out "Go! Get away!"

I could not. I was frozen in place as Mightyena experienced more convulsions. Whatever was happening to him, it was getting worse. So much worse. He had been angry before, but now he was pleading for me to run. "Please, Sarah!" he begged "You need to run… Guh… Before it's too late!"

**Boom…**

There was a booming sound.I froze in utter fear. I had heard it before. I had experienced it only once, when an old absol was turning one hundred years old. On his deathbed, I had heard it.

**Boom…**

It was a sound of danger, one that was not exactly an audible sound. It was more of a vibration, one that resonated through my senses.

**Boom…**

Time seemed to slow down for me, just like it had before. The only pokemon that had been nice to me, some old timer absol in the crystal community. At one hundred years old, he was dying of old age. It was peaceful, but what scared me more than anything was the sound I had heard.

**Boom…**

That old timer had seen the fear in my eyes, and told me what power I had. Absol senses differ from pokemon to pokemon. Some were brilliant at discerning natural disasters. Others could more accurately detail the surroundings, like a mental map. All absol can do all of that, though every absol has a strength. But, the rarest, and possibly the worst, was mine.

**Boom…**

I could feel the heartbeat of pokemon if I tuned in to them. If they were in danger of dying, their heartbeat was more than audible. It drowned out everything else. That old absol, the only one to really be kind to me before I met Caleb, he was slowly dying of old age, and I heard every one of his heartbeats until they stopped. Eventually they stopped, and that was really the first time I cried. I had changed from someone who could take words from people, and let it slide off to someone who could become an emotional wreck at any time. It had changed me forever, to feel that.

**Boom…**

The only person to ever be kind to me before Caleb showed up. Dead. It had been incredibly peaceful, but not for me. Now, I had people being nice to me left and right. Caleb, my love. Nincada and Servine had been kind before I had decided to try and stop Caleb. And… Mightyena. He had been kind to me as well.

**Boom…**

Mightyena's heartbeat rang out. It seemed stronger than the old absol's, and it was not fading away at all. So, why was I hearing it?

**Boom…**

In fact, it was moving faster, beating harder. It was getting **louder**.

**Boom…**

The fact that I could hear it without trying, it scared me. Mightyena was in danger, but his heart was beating faster, stronger. That was supposed to be good, right?

Mightyena was still screaming at me. He was telling me to run away, to flee. There was incredible danger in the air, but I was paralyzed, halted by what I was hearing. It was doing the same thing to me that had happened when that absol had gone. The sound roared in my senses, not really a sound.

**Boom…**

**Boom…**

**Boom…**

Sound began to rush back. The heartbeat was no longer the dominant noise. I had completely zoned out, listening to it. "Sarah!" Mightyena cried out, and then, he stopped talking. I looked at him, and then, I had to look up. Fear struck my heart in an instant. Mightyena had completely changed. He was bigger, bigger than I was. His fur had gone completely black. His eyes, they carried so much pain. "What-" I asked. "Please run… Please…" Mightyena pleaded weakly "I… I can't…."

Mightyena suddenly snapped in his stance, into a much more straight stance. I watched in horror as he again grew in size. Dark electricity swirled around his body, turning the ground grey where he touched it. His tail was whipping about, and then, I watched, sickened, as it split into three. Mightyena suddenly stopped struggling. His eyes closed. "Help…" he muttered before he was silent. His three tails seemed to become pure dark energy. He looked like a shadowy monster.

_Dark energy. The same energy as once before, when… When Caleb's sword turned black and shocked Mightyena. _

Mightyena had been suffering since the day I met him if that was the case. He was stopped from talking about it by this energy. This evil, dark energy. The danger rolling off of his body like a thunderstorm suddenly turned into a hurricane. He had suddenly become life threatening, if my dangersense was not lying to me. Now, I moved, stepping back. The instant I did, Mightyena's eyes opened.

_Wha- What is that?!_

Mightyena's eyes were pure, glowing red. Red with power. Red with pure rage. He bared his teeth now. again, horror shot through me. His fangs were serrated. They looked like they were built to rip things apart.

"**GRRRRRRRRRRRRR…**" he growled. His growl sent shock waves through the ground, and his new dark aura seemed to react to the sound, expanding out through the room. He towered above me, almost three times my size. He raised a paw, and the normally bare toes now bore horrible serrated claws.

"Mightyena…" I whispered "what happened to you?"

His paw suddenly shot forward. He hit me in the face and sent me flying right across the room. He had hit me!

"Ugh… What was that for?" I asked. He was so much stronger than before. He was not in his right mind. Would I have to fight him? I looked up, realizing I was very much in danger, but Mightyena was not there.

"What the- OW!" I exclaimed as I was struck **in the back**. He had gotten behind me somehow! He was extremely fast. I sailed across the room again. I had gotten this treatment from that aerodactyl and now Mightyena.

_Is it even Mightyena anymore?_

I had no idea. Mightyena was not something I could not identify. Had he violently evolved or something? Unlikely.

_Look at me, analyzing the situation. i'm in trouble here!_

I certainly was. Like the fight with the aerodactyl, I spent a bunch of time thinking. It got me hurt. Mightyena was directly above me. He planted a paw on me. His claws dug into my fur. I felt a piercing pain in my side. He was cutting me!

"Mightyena, please!" I begged "you aren't yourself, please! Gah!"

He dragged his new claws away, leaving painful marks on my body. I was in a lot of pain. he kicked me away effortlessly. I looked to my side when I got up. I was **bleeding**. Nausea overwhelmed me. I had never seen so much blood. My sensed did not detect too much danger from the wound, so I assumed that it was not to bad, but the sight of the red liquid soaking my pink fur was sickening. I had never seen so much blood at one time.

Immediately, as soon as I saw that, reality set in. Terror became my first emotion. Analyzing was a thing of the past. I had to escape Mightyena right now. I ran for the semicircular exit. Suddenly, something grabbed me. I looked back at Mightyena. One of the three whipping energy tails had shot forward, elongating and wrapping around me. He was holding me in place.

_How-... Oh no…._

He raised me another few feet. Then, he brutally slammed me into the ground. I screeched in pain as I made a crater in the stone. I felt badly beat up. "Mightyena… Please…" I whispered.

He did it again. He was walking very slowly towards me, the tail holding me slowly retracting so that I was in the same place. I had dust in my fur. My hurt side had been the side slammed into the side. I probably looked like an absolute mess. He reached me. His fangs bared, he was going to bite me. The ease of which his claws had cut me, his bite, that could destroy me.

_He might be able to kill me!_

He prepared to bite my head off. I had to save myself.

_I'm sorry, Mightyena. _

I fired a powerful flamethrower right into his massive maw. He roared, and a wave of pure force blasted me out of his tail grip, and sailing straight into a wall. This was unreal. It had to be a dream right? I was still in the Shaymin Village, maybe thrashing in my sleep. Mightyena looked at me. His mouth looked the same. I saw no burn damage, but he was jet black except the eyes and teeth anyways. One of the tails whipped all the way over and smacked me right in the face, sending me across the room again. I was near the hall to get to the portal room. I could escape. Mightyena could not fit in there like that.

I inched towards it, hobbling as fast as I could. That last attack had somehow hit my legs. I was at the entrance, and then I was in.

_I made it!_

But, I was far from safe. Mightyena's tails shot into the corridor, and wrapped around me. I screamed, partly in fear, partly in anger that there was nothing I could do to combat Mightyena. He was a monster now. It was not his fault. He pulled me out. His tails then contracted. My back legs were pinned against my belly, and my right foreleg was bent awkwardly. my head got held back as my horn was pressed against my back.

I stared fearfully into the eyes of the monster holding me. He growled, sending shockwaves through the air, and painfully through my body. His tails began to squeeze me. I had little air, and I felt the strain in my legs and body. I tried to shout at him, to get him to wake up.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!?" I shouted at him.

**⌁ Jake's POV ⌁**

The job was almost done. Within twenty minutes, we could go. I did want to see Caleb again. I could wave him off this time. I get that he would want to get out quietly, as that seemed to just be who he was. He avoided unnecessary confrontation. He just wanted to get out of here.

There was never much pride in his voice. No arrogance. Happiness was rare, too. He seemed to be quite emotionless unless he had a real reason to be emotional. His emotions when he had them never took control of his actions.

As I watched the psychic type pokemon team were almost done building enough power for a mass teleport. Everybody there, the group that was going, stood there and waited. I had just finished talking to Nincada about the exact details of what happened before Servine set off after Sarah.

Suddenly, I felt woozy. Another dimensional scream? But I haven't touched anything! Why was I feeling this?

My vision went black. I lost all feeling, and a flash of light blasted my senses. I was suddenly in that same cursed room. The monster was there, serrated teeth bared, glowing red eyes focused on something that I immediately saw was Sarah. The three tails the monster had were wrapped completely around Sarah, and she was being squeezed, trapped in a terrible position, Legs strained because they were being bent in the wrong horror, I realized that she had blood on her. I wanted to call out to her, to stop this, realizing that Sarah was fighting this thing, maybe right now. I wanted to scream. Sarah was being squeezed, hard. She screamed.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!?"

My blood ran cold as the darkness around the entire scenario. I was seeing this thing start to kill Sarah. This could not happen. I could not let it. My vision went away. I was feeling things again. I opened my eyes quickly. Several pokemon were looking worriedly at me, including Swampert. I lept to my feet, prompting the others to clear away from me.

"Get that teleport going as fast as possible" I commanded "i think Sarah is in danger!"

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

_Not Sarah… Please not Sarah. _

I could only watch as Sarah was being crushed. My body was moving completely on it's own. I was massive now. Sarah's fire had hurt, but was nowhere near as bad as it should have. I wish now that it was.

Because Sarah was being crushed. Three weird energy streams of darkness came from somewhere behind me, and had wrapped around Sarah. They were crushing her. **I **was crushing her.

_Stop this. Please. _

I could not stop. My body was out of my control. This darkness, it had changed me, supersized me, and took control. The things wrapping around Sarah were still tightening. I felt no anger, no aggressiveness. In fact, I was drained of it. It seemed any anger I felt just made this… Thing stronger. I tried to think calmly, but I felt a lot of fear. Fear for Sarah. I feared that I would kill her.

I could not feel my tail. The things stretching out in front of me and crushing Sarah, was that what was left of it? If I got out of this, I feared that I would have three tails from here on out. That would just be embarrassing.

Sarah was being constricted even more. She began to make whimpering noises of pain, too tired and hurt to do much more. Her whimpering made me want to cry. I was hurting her. She did not deserve this. She was blinded by love, and that made her do some pretty crazy things. She was really a good person. I knew what it was like to be blinded by love, just a little bit.

Suddenly, the unthinkable happened. An unmistakable **SNAP **filled the air, and Sarah screamed in agony. One of her legs had been broken. Seventeen years of my life I had never seen or heard of a broken bone. I knew it was possible of course, but it took a lot to do it, especially to dark types that have thick bones. Sarah's screaming intensified as my tails continued to crush the broken limb. I saw that two other legs were also in terrible angles. Soon, they too would be broken if this kept up.

_Stop torturing her! Please!_

There was no letting up. I was completely out of control. My gaze unwavered. I did not blink. I had no expression, though my mouth was slightly open, probably scaring Sarah to death with fangs. I could only mentally shout at myself, and it was doing no good whatsoever.

**SNAP!**

Sarah's screaming turned very high pitched as the tails around her contracted again, breaking her right foreleg. She was still bleeding from her side where I had cut her terribly. I had no idea why she had not fallen unconscious yet. Was this darkness keeping her awake, vulnerable?

Her screams began to die out as she seemed to accept the pain. It hurt so bad to see her like this, yet there was nothing I could do. Sarah looked… Defeated. That's the only way I can describe it. Sarah, who never gave up. Sarah, who was incredibly tough and could take down just about anything. She looked defeated in the sheer hopelessness of the situation.

Her silence was broken by her third leg breaking. **SNAP! **Her screams were louder than ever now. I was killing her. She looked into my eyes, begging me to stop. Begging me to relent. I could not. I could only kill.

_I can't do anything..._

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

I have never experienced such pain in my life. Ever. My legs were in so much agony that I could not keep from screaming, and it was getting worse. Every part of my body screamed in pain. My vision was blurred. I should have fallen unconscious a long time ago. Something was keeping me awake. This aura around me, striking the ground and turning the dirt grey, it must have been keeping me awake while I was tortured by Mightyena.

The pain just did not stop. My body was being compressed now. Blissfully, one of my legs had been spared from the torment, but my entire body was about to be broken. I heard a horrible **crack** as something in my body exploded in pain. Another bone broken. Another scream released into the air. The tails contracted again. My head held back because my horn was pinned against my back, I was forced to stare straight at Mightyena's face. His serrated teeth. His ears looked torn up. His glowing eyes. They almost looked emotionless, but there was rage there. Anger, hatred. This beast would kill me and I could do nothing about it.

My attacks, they would not work. I was out of breath, squeezed by the tails of Mightyena. I wondered for a moment what bone had been broken, what bones were in my chest? My thoughts were wiped out by another squeezing force. More bones snapped inside me. The pain was immense. I squealed in the endless agony.

_Stop! Please! You're killing me!_

I could die here. It was entirely possible. I wanted to see Caleb. One last time I wanted to see him, but if he walked in on this, would he even stop it?

_Don't be ridiculous. Of course he would. No matter what they have done to him, he will help. That is who he is. _

Caleb was the best person I knew. He would help if he could, but could he help? I was not match for Mightyena in this state, and I feared Caleb would fare the same. I thought of him, broken down and bleeding, dying. It broke my heart. I hoped he had found another entrance. I hoped beyond anything that he would. I could not bear to know that he had died so close to his goal.

_Why can't I let him go? It makes no sense…_

More bones broke. More screaming could be heard. I hoped with everything I had that it could just be over. More than that, I wanted to see Caleb again. I would survive… at least until he got here.

Mightyena apparently had other plans. His massive jaws opened a bit more. A final constriction broke several more bones, and while I screamed, he sunk his massive teeth right into me. My skin gave little resistance this time. I screamed once more, before I finally caved to unconsciousness.

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

I walked slower than before, taking my time now. I would reach the cavern when I would. Rushing… There was no point to that, really. I wanted more than anything to break into a run, but I shoved it down. I could walk for now.

That is, until I heard an incredibly loud scream. It came from within the cave, resonating way out until it reached me. It would have to be incredibly loud for me to hear it from here. It was a scream of pain. A very, very familiar scream.

I broke into a run. I sprinted as fast as I could. There was no question about it. Someone was in danger, and I was the only one around to save them. Palkia was who knows where, and nobody came out here often. I was this person's only hope for survival if they were in such danger.

_Don't kid yourself. I know that harming pokemon is extremely difficult. _

I poured on the speed until I was actually using quick attack. I would help this person I would with as much haste as I could manage. I skidded straight into the cave entrance.

What I saw caused me to freeze in absolute terror. Something massive and dark occupied the back of the room. It turned to me. Red eyes glowed with intense anger and hatred. It looked ravaged, it's ears looked torn. It's jet black fur seemed disorganized. A dark aura surrounded the beast, and it's aura of danger told me to run away as fast as I could.

_It has something in it's mouth. _

the realization made me focus on the object in question. It was large, about my size, almost exactly so. It was red, and… Pink. It was an absol, but it was pink.

_Sarah!_

What was Sarah doing here? She must have come to stop me, but this **thing** had attacked her. Rage filled my chest as I viewed the monster. In response to my glare, the beast dropped Sarah, who slammed into the ground facing me. I swallowed back some bile. Sarah was bleeding. Badly. There was a lot of blood on the ground already, leaking from her wounds. The scene repulsed me. I wanted to flee again, but that was quickly replaced by even more anger. This thing had perhaps killed Sarah. She was not moving. her eyes were wide open, but nothing was happening behind them.

At that moment, I was ready to kill this thing. I would tear it apart. I swore on it.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Consciousness suddenly jolted back to me. I could see again. I could not move, and I could barely breath. Everything hurt. What had awoken me? Someone was in front of me. An absol. It had armour with a single green orb in the middle of it. Only one absol wears that.

_Caleb!_

I was overjoyed. Caleb had come to rescue me! I tried to move, to let him know I was still alive, but my body would not respond.

**Boom…**

The sound. it was back. The dying heartbeat. This time, it was insanely loud in my senses.

**Boom…**

What was it? Who was it? Caleb looked fine, in fact he looked as healthy as anyone can be. Who was dying. Was it Mightyena?

**Boom…**

_It's mine. _

I knew it immediately. I was dying, and I could hear my own heartbeats shatter the calm of the room. _Go away _I told it mentally. It did not go away. I was dying right here. I had gotten my wish, to see Caleb once more. I had everything I needed now. I just had to let him know somehow that I was still alive. I focused on him. When I did, the noise faded away to a background noise.

"Sarah…" he whispered. His blade glowed a brilliant red. Mightyena growled at Caleb, stepping into view. "She… No one can lose such a large amount of blood and survive. No one. Her eyes… They look dead…"

My eyes looked dead? As in clouded and lifeless?

_Am I actually dead?_

No, I was not. I was in pain. Pain means life. Caleb, he could not see that. All he saw was my broken, unmoving body, and my apparently lifeless eyes. He saw a massive pool of my blood soaking me. To him, I was already dead.

"You…" Caleb growled, his blade's glow turning brighter every passing second. His anger was immense. The cause of death: the monster in front of him. Caleb did not know that it was Mightyena, Caleb did not see the brutal transformation. He only saw me, apparently dead, and the monster that had killed me.

_Caleb…_

"Sarah… No one deserves to die before their time" Caleb said, his voice growing ever louder and more dangerous. "I barely believe what I am seeing. Sarah is lying right there, lifeless…". His eyes suddenly shone with intense anger. "And you have the arrogance to stand over her body without any remorse, without any feeling!" he shouted. His sword glowed almost brighter than a sunset, illuminating the cavern entirely

_I'm not dead, Caleb. I'm not…_

Caleb just silently stood there, as if he was wondering what to do. He must be so conflicted. Would he attack or flee? My guess was that he would attack, even at the cost of his own life. he was so angry at my apparent death…

_Caleb…. Do you… Do you love me? Actually? _

Caleb would experience this anger for anyone, I realized. I was not the exception, but my heart soared at the understanding that Caleb did not hate me, he just needed to be apart when he was trying to get home.

_I love you Caleb… I want… I want you to know that…._

My heartbeat was slowing. I could hear it slow. Caleb was silent. His rage evident in the blade he bore on his back. "I…" he whispered "Sarah. Everything you have done… to me, to my promise to get home, it doesn't mean you deserved this. I know you came to stop me. I know it. You did not deserve to die here, and there is nothing I can do for you". He looked up again. "Except…"

Something terrifying happened when he said that. Crystal star's glow dimmed as it's red power was replaced by black power. The white light within changed to a source of red lightning, arcing through the blade. It's power was immense, and very dark. The same darkness in Mightyena, the utter rage. That's what this power was, pure anger in an energy form. No such thing should be possible, but it had been possible through Crystal Star. It had initially shocked Mightyena with the dark energy, and eventually it had changed him. Now the weapon was full of the same energy, due to Caleb's rage at my death.

_No. Calm down! That energy, it can't be used!_

red lightning coursed through the crystal sword. The darkness surrounding it held enough power to blast apart this entire room. "Except…" Caleb said again, and the darkness began to exude from the crystal, becoming a sort of fog. It clung to Caleb like a mist. "I…" he said, and then: "**I Will kill you!**" Caleb shouted at the top of his lungs, and then something insane happened. Crystal Star shattered.

It blew up, sending crystal shards everywhere, a long sharp piece landing right next to me. I wanted to recoil, but the shard was blue, not black. The darkness was still hovering above Caleb, who had not moved a muscle. It floated above him, and then it began to wrap itself around his form. It seemed to embrace him, before sinking right into him.

_No… Caleb…_

Caleb roared in fury, and his voice was badly distorted already. His roars turned into roars of pain as his body began to contort, to mutate on the spot.

_Not Caleb… Please not Caleb…_

"Gaaaahh**hhhhh!**" Caleb screamed as his muscles bulged within the skin, and he twisted and turned on the spot. His tail turned into a blade of pure energy and began to whip around like Mightyena's were. He began to grow, one moment at a time. Each time his muscles contracted and bulged, he grew. His fur became longer and turned a dark grey, though not the pitch black of Mightyena's fur. I watched in horror as his horn got twisted and bent, until it was two straight blades attached at a corner. The edge of the blade became serrated, as did his claws, now much longer. As he grew, and these changes occured, his bag broke apart from his back, and fell in pieces to the floor. One pouch opened, spilling out more crystal shards. The remnants from he had edited the weapon. He roared again, and the cavern shook.

_The pain he must be experiencing..._

I realized that like mightyena, Caleb would lose control over himself. He would mercilessly attack, maybe even striking me. I could only be glad that Mightyena was distracted from me at the moment. Finally, Caleb grew one more size. His eyes turned pure, glowing red. The piece on his head…

It cracked. A diagonal, erratic crack appeared on it. His jaw opened to reveal terrifying serrated fangs. The beast that used to be Caleb roared, creating a horrifying tremor throughout the entire cavern. Caleb looked like a monster even more than Mightyena did. His bent horn made him look deformed. His giant serrated claws outmatched Mightyena's claws, maybe because Mightyena did not have proper claws to begin with.

"**GRRRRRRRRR…**" Caleb growled in exactly the same distorted way that Mightyena had. He was about to attack. Mightyena suddenly started the fight. I don't know why he was waiting but I can only be glad he did. Mightyena shot forward, somehow managing to whip me in the face with one of his tails along the way. It hurt, but nowhere near as much as I already was hurting. The two collided. smashing into each other with a force that caused quite a bit of damage to the ground around them.

They were brawling right there, flashing massive claws and Caleb swinging his horn, but neither seemed to be doing a lot of damage. I realized that this would be a fight to the finish, and then I realized that I may not survive to the finish. My heartbeat was slowing, and it was beginning to be hard to even think. I felt strangely calm. The pain was gone. Worries became mundane. That old absol who I watched die of old age, he had told me death would be peaceful. I don't think he knew what would happen, but I certainly felt… Peaceful. Dying… What would it feel like really?

I should find out soon.

**Boom…**

…

**Boom…**

…

**Boom…**

_My heartbeat is slowing down… Is this it? Will I die?_

I didn't want to die. I wanted to fight, but I had lost. I could not move, blink, or even breath. It was over.

_I don't want to die…._

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

Sarah was dying. I could taste her blood still on my tongue. I had bitten into her, and now she was dying. Now, Caleb had shown up. His weapon had turned dark with red lightning and exploded, it's energy transforming him into a monster. Caleb was now in the same situation I was in. He would be forced to watch as he fought. it seemed Caleb and I were to fight now. Neither of us had control, that much was certain. I only could be glad that my body was distracted from Sarah, and would not finish her off. She would survive a little longer, but I had caused a lot of damage. She could not last losing that much blood.

I wanted to cry, but of course I could not. I was fighting Caleb, who had been transformed into a massive mutated absol. He was just about my size, though absol are known for their strength and speed. My tactics in battle, which would take him down no matter what advantages he had over me, had been tossed out the window for sheer strength. Caleb would win if I did not use any smart tactics. The beasts we had become had no tactics, and were out of control. Strength was what mattered here.

_Please defeat me, Caleb. I don't want to be forced to view this anymore. _

I wanted to be knocked out, to be unconscious. I hoped Caleb would do that for me, but I realized that Caleb would kill me the moment he had the chance. Both of us would kill the other if we had the chance. Another blow rained on my head as I slashed at Caleb's neck. His armor had somehow grown with him, though the gem on it had changed color, becoming jet black. The weird double helix pattern on it, like some twisted ladder or something, was red now. It looked menacing now.

Caleb raised a massive claw, and dark energy grew on it becoming a massive, serrated shadow claw. If I got hit by that, it was over. My body dodged as I saw it coming, and rammed Caleb in the side. The problem was that I had just hit the armor. the impact was jarring, and I would have winced had I been in control.

_Beat me as fast as you can, Caleb. Please. _

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

I had reached the cliffside above the forgotten wasteland. I was late, very late, but I had made it. I could hear sounds of battle coming from the cavern, even here, which meant it must be loud. I assumed that Sarah had already gotten there. I raced forward again. Not using quick attack had been a swell idea, even knowing that I was late to the party. I had enough energy to fight now. I would take Sarah down. Then, I would help Caleb to the finish line if he could not walk.

Suddenly, a massive, unearthly roar made the ground tremor. I wondered if it was Palkia, but the god pokemon was nowhere to be seen. It had come from the cave. Another roar followed. It could not be Sarah or Caleb. Had I stumbled across an entirely different battle? I was taking no chances. I sped up as much as I could to get there in time. The entrance was fast approaching.

**Boom!**

The ground shook as some incredible impact within the cave itself had almost made me trip, or at least I would have tripped if this speed band did not keep me on my feet. It's magic was pretty effective. I was able to make it. What I saw, that stopped me in my tracks. I took off the band immediately, allowing myself to move freely again.

The band fell out of my hand as I saw the scene in front of me. Two massive **things **were battling in the cavern entrance. Both were quadrupeds. Both were massive. Both had horrible serrated claws and fangs. One had three tails that whipped around behind it crazily, without any rhyme or reason. The other, it had one tail that looked like a blade of energy, and a horn on the side of it's head…

I swallowed back disgust. The one with the horn looked like a mutated absol. It's bladelike appendages were serrated. The much larger stone in his head had a diagonal crack in it. It's dark grey fur was matted and looked ungroomed. It was using giant shadow claws to rake at the other beast. I could not tell what that one was. Where was Caleb? Or Sarah?

I finally saw what made me want to throw up. There was a pool of shed blood, and in the middle of it, a red stained pokemon. It was an absol, and I thought it was entirely covered in blood before I realized that it was in fact red.

_That's Sarah!_

Sarah looked dead. Dead! I stared in horror at the scene. I was fortunate enough that the monsters were too busy killing each other to notice me there. I had to get over there. If Sarah was still alive, I needed to keep her that way.

_What can I do for her? I can heal myself, not others. _

Nevertheless, I sneaked into the cave. The roaring of the beasts hurt my ears. I had no idea who they were. One looked like a mutated absol, the other just looked like a random quadruped. I had no idea what it looked like. I needed to get to Sarah right now. I ran around the edge of the room, almost getting crushed by the three tailed one as it was thrown into the wall. I stopped looking. I reached Sarah.

_Am I too late?_

She looked bad. Her blood was in a pool around her. Her eyes were open. They had no visible thought or emotion. creating a noise of horror in my throat, I realized that if she was not dead, she would have mere minutes left to live. I have never experienced such a thing. I have never seen so much blood at once. In fact, I've only seen blood a few times at all. The battle was drawing near us. I had to protect Sarah at all costs if she was alive.

Drawing the power of the grass type into my hand, I created an unsheathing motion, and created a leaf blade in my hand. In the other hand, I generated an energy ball. I had been practicing something new with the technique. Recognizing how the leaf blade functions, I manipulated the grass energy in the energy ball to add spikes to it, create a chain attached to it which I held by the end of it at a handle. The spike ball on the chain was a pretty devastating weapon if I could hit something properly.

If those things came any closer, I would have to attack so that Sarah was not hurt in the battle. They crashed down right in front of me, grappling. The three tails of the one beast were wrapped around the absol shaped beast, and that one was trying to gore the first with it's serrated horn. They were right next to me.

"Stop!" I shouted as loud as I could, though my voice had so much fear that i'm sure it was more of a squeak. They froze. Their head whipped towards me at the same time. I suddenly realized that I just made two red eyed monsters angry with me at the same time.

_Not a good idea, but I can't get out of here. Sarah will get hurt more. Unless…_

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Servine had come to save me. She had a glowing green sword in one hand and a weird spiked ball on a chain in the other. That one looked deadly. I wondered why she seemed to look different or something.

_I'm delirious. I'm dying. _

Servine had just done something incredibly stupid: Angering two giant monster versions of Caleb and Mightyena. Then, she bolted away from me to land on the other side of the room. "Get away from her, you jerks!" she yelled at them. She tried to sound brave, but she was as scared as she possibly could be. She was trying to keep the battle away from me.

"**GRRRRRRRRR…**" both of them growled at once. The ground rumbled. The dark aura around them expanded again. The entire room looked dead, grayscale. The darkness sunk into the floor, into everything. Color leached out of things. My blood that I could see were a little less colorful. In fact, my blood looked almost grey now. Color was just going away.

Servine looked around, seeing the lack of color in the area, and grew that much more afraid. Yet, she stood in front of the two monstrous pokemon, ready to protect me as much as possible. She would lead Mightyena and Caleb away from me, maybe out of the room. She could not heal me the way that Wigglytuff or Chimecho could. I did not know if they were coming. Probably not. My vision was ever so slightly blurred, and I think it was getting slightly worse over time. I felt awful. Servine was now about to suffer the same fate I was.

Mightyena and Caleb Started walking towards her. She tensed. Mightyena's tails whipped around, smacking the ground, walls and Caleb a few times. Caleb's tail, now also made of dark energy, whipped around too. It cut grooves and sliced up Mightyena's skin a few times. Both were focused now on Servine.

_Run away. Don't worry about me, run away!_

Servine needed to flee. If she didn't, she would be killed the same as I was.

"I don't know what you two are…" Servine said, her voice suddenly level. She looked angry. "...But you are going to pay. I will take you apart piece by piece if I have to!". It was all similar to what Caleb had said. Caleb had been turned into a terrible monster by the dark energy of the sword. It should not happen to Servine, but I imagined for a moment if it did. She would be just as terrible as the other two. If this darkness could spread…

Fear filled my dying heart again. It would turn into the first and last bloody war, one sided and more of a massacre. If this could infect others… Pokemon as a species did not stand a chance against these.

_Please run away, Servine. _

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

Now both were walking straight towards me. Directly away from Sarah. That was good for her. Was it good for me? No. No, it was not. Sarah had been taken apart, and these two did not even look damaged. Maybe I could do something, but I could tell these were no ordinary pokemon. It was likely they could to toe to toe with Palkia if they got the chance. They were walking towards me. I brandished my blade as well as my ball and vine. I would do my best.

The sunlight was turning slightly orange, meaning that synthesis would do less than it could have done. If I got badly hurt, that was it. Suddenly, one of the three tailed one's tails came flying at me. I slashed at it experimentally while jumping to the side. it cut away easily, like it was some ghostly thing, but it instantly regrew and smacked me across the face. The force was stunning, sending me all the way across the room. No wonder they could make Sarah bleed so. They were impossibly strong. Rayquaza had not hurt so much. My face stinging, I got back up again. Somehow, my weapons had not left my hands. I put a determined scowl on my face. The one who had hit me was there. The other was not.

Too late, I whirled around. The one that looked like a mutated absol was right above me. it planted a massive paw on my chest, slamming me into the ground. It growled at me, sending tremors through the ground. then, it's horn started to flicker in shape as dark aura covered it and made it look much bigger.

_A massive night slash. _

I was saved by the three tailed monster, as it tried to attack at the same time by wrapping me in it's tails and yanking me away. The monster absol's attack obliterated the spot where my neck was. My safety was short lived, as the first had me completely wrapped up and was contracting it's tails.

It hurt really bad. I wondered if this is what crushed Sarah. My arms and legs would not break like hers had, but I was still going to be in bad shape if this kept up.

The monster absol saved me this time. It attacked me again, it's massive shadow claw shredding my confinements, having some resistance, and got several deep cuts on my chest. I could handle a few cuts. I swirled my blade around my head, ignoring the pain. I severed the remains of the tails that were regrowing to buy time, and then I smashed my ball and vine straight into the paw of the other. The three tailed monster simply regrew it's tails for a moment, but the monster absol raised the paw I had struck immediately, growled, and swiped at me.

Having noticed this incredibly obvious move, I leaped up in a sort of air cartwheel and simultaneously slashed and smashed the leg attached to the paw. I haven't fought like this in a while, and i'm not sure why. I was so good at it.

My self congratulation lasted only a moment before I was smacked around by several tails at once. Then, the blade like single tail of the grey furred monster came around and tried to give me a good cut. I was lucky enough to strike it, so the flat of the blade is what hit me. I was sent sailing, straight out of the cave by a good twenty feet, but I was alive. I was still capable of fighting. Some blood came out of the cuts on my chest, but they were not deep enough to hit my heart or any other important things. The beasts seemed hesitant to come out into the light. If I did not come back, they might turn their attention on each other again, or worse, Sarah. Even if she was dead, I could not allow these beasts to destroy her.

I charged, my weapons at the ready. They had already begun to realize that they were in fact enemies with each other. It would soon become a battle royale. I activated my quick attack and sailed towards them. Moving independently, one of the three tails smacked me straight into the dirt as that monster began to focus on the monster absol again.

_Who are these? Why have I never heard of pokemon like this? I'm sure that if pokemon as ruthless as this existed, they would be known. Are these even pokemon? _

I got up as fast as I could, but I was already being wrapped by the tail that had smacked me down. It circled me repeatedly, and the monster was still fighting the other one. How was it acting so independent? I slashed through the tail, causing the part that held me to fade away. I continued slashing at it, walking forward. I was saving my ball and vine for when I needed it. Smashing these things would be a waste of time. I was fast enough to handle some energy based tails. When the other two began to attack me while the massive monster who owned them battled the monster absol, I began to have some trouble. I had trained to deliver quick strikes without using a full body quick attack. By focusing the energy only into my arm, I could slash through much more things much more quickly.

I waded through them before something very unfortunate happened. The tails suddenly retracted and launched a full attack on me. I was hit by all three, and I was crushed into the wall, pinned by the tails. Those soon retracted as the owning monster began using them to fight the other beast. The one I was fighting seemed to be losing somewhat, taking more hits than the other.

I could not stand very well. In fact, I slid back down when I tried. Where had all my energy gone? Had I actually recovered from my initial sprint? Maybe I hadn't. Maybe I had gone to far with the extent of my powers. I had failed.

"I'm sorry, everyone" I whispered aloud as I watched the battle in front of me "I failed to stop this…"

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Servine was down. My vision was blurrier than ever. I should have already died. I should have just faded away at this point, but somehow I was still alive. It could not possibly be much longer though. My heartbeat still grew slower over time.

_Why am I still alive?_

I had no clue why I was still alive. I shouldn't be. By all rights, I shouldn't be. Did I want to know, or did I want to go already? it was hopeless. Servine had managed not to get herself killed, and had been impressive enough with her weapons forged out of grass energy, but the battle was over for me and her. Mightyena and Caleb had to fight, and when one of them was dead, me and Servine would be finished off.

_If I don't die first. _

Caleb seemed to be winning his fight with Mightyena. Mightyena was tossed with a heavy **crunch** into the opposite wall. I wondered why I had to fall like this. In this position I could see every event in the room. I did not want to. I wanted to have been facing the wall or something. Maybe Caleb could have had more hope and not transformed. Maybe servine would not have seen my 'dead' eyes, and gotten herself in this situation. Maybe I could have pretended it was not happening at all. I could not even close my eyes, I had no energy.

The monsters were squaring off again. One would attack, one would get hurt, one would be tossed away. Rinse and repeat. That is how every connection between these two had been.

That changed now. As the sun turned orange, a powerful yellow light enveloped the entire room. I was half blinded, my vision even more blurry. I had not been able to close my eyes. Something was happening. Was it Palkia? Had he come to stop this?

Servine was rubbing her eyes, before her arm fell back down. A group of pokemon appeared out of the light. The light faded away over time. It's origin became clear: a circle of psychic types. They had apparently made a mass teleport to get the group here. Who was the group?

I mentally started as I realized that it was the guild members. At least, some of them. Wigglytuff himself was there. Chimecho was there. The healers. Jake the human-raichu was there looking about and so was Nincada as well. The tangela twins were there in the back. They immediately ran towards Servine. Servine grunted and pointed at me.

My mind raced. I was to be saved! There was no chance, and they had decided to pop right in the middle.

Of a battle. A massive deadly battle.

_Will they get to me?_

Chimecho saw me first. She gave a gasp of horror, but she seemed to freeze in fear. Not a single pokemon had seen the monster pokemon yet. That is, except Jake, who was staring at Mightyena and absolute terror. His eyes had so much fear in there, but there was also knowing. Did he get a vision of this thing? Was that why they had come?

Wigglytuff was not as frozen as Chimecho. The guildmaster began lumbering towards me, moving faster than I had ever seen him.

Caleb got in his way. The massive mutated absol looked down on Wigglytuff. His glowing eyes so apparent in the room suddenly. Wigglytuff seemed to see the problem in front of him immediately.

_Thank you for not sleeping on the job. _

Caleb raised a massive shadow claw and brought it down on Wigglytuff. I would have screamed, but the claw passed straight through the guildmaster.

_Of course, shadow claw is a ghost type attack. _

Caleb growled and tried again, fruitlessly. Wigglytuff opened his mouth, and blasted Caleb away. The legendary guildmaster had just damaged Caleb in his monster form. Caleb seemed to be only mildly inconvenienced, however. By them Wigglytuff had reached me.

My vision was going completely. I feared he would be seconds too late. My heartbeat was incredibly slow. Would I die right here?

As my vision went, the color pink suddenly filled my vision. Warmth filled me. Blessed warmth. Something I thought I would never feel again. Something was happening. The instant the warmth filled me, my heartbeat was back to normal. I could not hear it anymore. I was breathing. I was very much alive. A feeling of pressure hit my wounds. I wondered why it hurt so bad, but it must be the blood literally being sucked back into me. I felt alive, and being alive felt so much better than what had happened previously. I was a bit worried about how my blood had the color leached out of it, but for the moment I felt just fine.

I closed my eyes, feeling the blindness going away but not wanting to see the carnage. I wanted to feel alive and unafraid for a little while longer. I suddenly was shocked out of that when my legs snapped back into place. I screeched, drawing the attention of everyone. Including, unfortunately, Caleb and Mightyena. The pain in my legs vanished. The healing was complete. My blood was back in my body. My heart was beating.

Suddenly, there was a loud impact and Wigglytuff was knocked away from me by an attack. He was heavier, and so only went back about ten feet by the attack. I tried getting up, but my muscles were reacting slowly at first. Servine saw me get up. "You're alive!" she exclaimed. She seemed relieved. So was I, frankly. I should have died. I should not be standing. The one person I cared about was Caleb. I looked at him. If Caleb had any reasoning left, he just might notice that I was in fact alive. He loomed above me.

"Get out of there!" Servine shouted. Caleb was not in any way in control. His energy tail whipped around and tried to bleed me. At the speed it was going, I would have been badly cut. A flash of green, and Servine had parried the blade with extreme difficulty. "Wake up, you're life is in danger! Again!" Servine shouted at me. Caleb's tail retracted, and Servine prepared her blade for the next attack. "But that's-" I started, before I was grabbed. Mightyena's tails held me again. Having seen Servine's moves, I attacked the tails and made them vanish temporarily. I dropped to the floor_. _"I need to tell you guys something!" I called out towards the group, getting hit really quick in the process. Mightyena had basically punched me in the face. Machoke would have been jealous of the attack.

"Now's not the time!" Servine scolded me. She was right of course, but if we had to kill them… I was not about to. Somehow, I needed to talk to Servine and the others. For now, we fought back to back, blasting at the two dark pokemon. Suddenly, Caleb lost all interest in me as a target, and slammed into Mightyena. Mightyena, taken by surprise, almost fell.

Chimecho was unsure of what to do. "I think they're dark types! My psychic won't do anything!" She cried.

_It's Caleb and Mightyena. Yeah, they are dark types. _

A team of psychic types, presumably the team that had gotten everyone here, was looking about with no idea what to do. They could not hurt Caleb and Mightyena too badly, except for medicham, and he was likely to get pummeled if he dared come too close. Jake was staring at Mightyena in terror. Me and Servine were really the only ones fighting, us and the tangela. I wondered where Nincada was.

I found out as Caleb suddenly brought a paw up in the air, an 'x' shaped slash on the thick pad. Nincada was right there. Caleb tried to crush him underfoot, but Nincada was a faster digger than anybody has ever given him credit for. Caleb was only mildly annoyed. Mightyena suddenly stopped fighting others, though his tails were still annoying, whipping about. A massive shadow ball with red lightning within appeared in front of his mouth. We cleared out immediately, but Caleb was too busy peering down the tiny hole and waiting for his prey to come back.

Mightyena launched his massive attack, and it missed all except for Caleb. Caleb was driven straight into the wall, causing rocks to fall from the ceiling and the entire room to tremble. Servine sidestepped a boulder, and the tangela caught one and held it together. Caleb was buried underneath about five tons of rubble.

"No!" I shouted, running to it. Servine ran up to me. "Are you crazy!?" she demanded "that thing almost killed you!"

"It's not his fault!" I shouted at her, and she gave me an odd look. "What do you me- Look out!"

Servine grabbed me with vines and basically threw me away as Mightyena charged into the scene. He was still a threat. I looked around. At some point in that sequence, the tangela had been knocked out. Jake had taken a hit too. He still looked really freaked out. Servine had gotten knocked away, too busy saving me to save herself. She was now occupied with Mightyena. Jake however, was doing nothing at all. "Get moving!" I yelled at him.

"But that-" he stammered

"I know what it is! I know why it's here! Just knock it out!" I shouted at him, done with trying to explain. How was I supposed to explain this anyway? _Oh, Mightyena just mutated into a massive marauding monster that thirsts for our blood, but it's not his fault, really. Oh and the other one was Caleb, who's sword kind of exploded and then that happened when he got angry at Mightyena for something Mightyena couldn't control. Both are infected with the same dark aura, we need to get them out of it. _

What a ridiculous sounding statement. The others would think I had managed to go insane throughout all this. I needed to be tactical. I needed to be calm about this. "Help knock him out, then we can figure out how to heal him!" I shouted instead.

"Stop playing the pronoun game!" he scolded me as we avoided a sweeping shadow tail "Just tell me what's going on!"

Mightyena lost interest in Servine, and began charging us. Servine sliced away at the tails so that we only had to deal with his massive claws and fangs. Deal with them we did. Jake, shocked out of his fears, gave Mightyena a mighty blast of lightning that halted him in his tracks temporarily, while I gave him a good blast in his open maw with a flamethrower. His roar shook the cavern, and more boulders fell. How had we not been all buried yet?

Mightyena recovered and charged again. I got in Jake's way, and generated an azure glow around my body. I stood right there as Jake jumped away and prepared another intense lightning bolt while Mightyena tried to hit me.

Not even giant shadow monsters can get past the awesomeness of protect. He slammed headfirst into me, trying to bite my skin. Nothing hurt me. Not even my fur was damaged. Jake then threw his prepared thunderbolt at mightyena and launched him away. I was completely unharmed. Man, I needed to use protect more often.

Mightyena got back up. He looked mostly fine, though he had some burns that showed up light grey compared to his dark fur.

_This may take a very long time…_

Servine and Jake stepped next to me. Servine's weapons glowed with power, Jake himself glowed with power. What did I have? Basically nothing. I just had a fancy flamethrower and a fancy water pulse and protect. Useful, but nothing special. I was just Sarah. Honestly, that's fine with me. We could win this, I just had to make sure that we did not kill him. Why did I care about Mightyena?

"_No one deserves to die before their time" _Caleb had said.

"_No one"_

He was absolutely right, and I would do what I could to save Mightyena. He was a better person than before, even fighting this evil darkness. After this, we had to unbury Caleb and fix him too. I wondered where the others were.

"I told my team to retreat" the medicham told me, standing with us in our line.

"We are ready" Came a voice. The tangela stood there, healed by Wigglytuff. "I told Chimecho to flee, her having no effect on this beast" Nincada said, appearing out of the dirt. Wigglytuff lumbered next to us, along with the rest of the remaining group. Nobody was dead. We could defeat Mightyena like this.

At least, I thought so until an unearthly roar made the cavern shake violently. We all fell over because of it. The roar was one of pure rage, one that could not possibly be made by a normal pokemon.

Mightyena had not uttered it.

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**Jango thinks he's being sneaky, talking to you guys at the start. I know what he's up to. Thing is, i don't really care. As long as he avoids spoiling things, he's in the clear. Don't tell him i said that, though, because its actually rather funny seeing him try to be sneaky with this. I'm pretty sure he's not listening to me right now. Pretty sure. **

**Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. You've heard it all before. Follow/favorite if you enjoyed, review if you have something to say, to comment on, if you have an idea, or a suggestion, I'm happy to hear it. Thank you all for reading!**

**Character bios are always open until i get too many. Considering that i only have six characters, one of which has already shown up in the story, it will take a while before i am full on characters. That said, character bio setup below!**

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	23. Chapter Twenty Three: True Power

**Climax time!**

**Yeah, this is part two of the climax. I get that chapter two kind of started the climax. Either way, you all will definitely be enjoying this chapter. I certainly did. Not even messing with Hyperjade today. He needs all his focus to get this story told right. Have fun reading this!**

**-Jango**

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Chapter 23: True Power

⽊ Servine's POV ⽊

The unearthly roar caught the three tailed monster's attention. We stood in a line, ready to fight this monster, thinking the other one was defeated. The roar was coming straight from the massive pile of rubble in the corner. After a few seconds of silence, A massive grey shape surrounded by darkness erupted from the mess. Badly damaged, but not relenting, the monster absol slammed straight into the three tailed monster. They both smashed into the wall and began to fight while we stood there, most of us frozen in fear. Both were there again.

I looked at them, trying to figure out what they were supposed to be. One was a massive, messed up absol. the other, it was harder to tell. It had a similar face to a Mightyena, but it's legs were thicker, stronger. It had claws. It had three tails.

_Wait a minute…_

Absol. Mightyena. two beasts that happened to look like mutated versions of Mightyena and Caleb?

_"It's not his fault!"_ Sarah had said. She had been very fearful when the monster absol had gotten buried. What the hell was going on? I watched the two of them, and suddenly something stood out.

_The monster absol is wearing armor._

It was. The armor was hard to spot, being exactly the same color as the fur, but it was there. A large, circular stone was in the middle of it, pitch black but with a familiar yet now red pattern in it. How had I not noticed that?

Everyone else was hesitating, probably knowing that we could not fight both at once. The danger was the bladelike tail of 'caleb', whipping around. 'Mightyena' was facing us, his three tails whipping around 'Caleb'. We had not been paying attention, and the blade tail suddenly whipped towards us in a slashing motion. We all had to duck and cover, except for Nincada, who was too small to be hit anyways. As one large group, we backed up quick. Wigglytuff almost did not notice us back up, and when he saw it, instead walked in front of us, ready to defend us. I have never seen Wigglytuff really fight, instead of launching an attack once or twice.

Suddenly, the battle unfolding took a freak turn as 'Caleb' had been thrust away finally after causing a lot of damage. He was flung right at us. Nincada disappeared underground, and the rest of us fled. Wigglytuff even jumped aside. He was not the best jumper, but he got the job done. We were near a tunnel that led deeper into the cavern, way too small for the monster pokemon to get in, though 'Caleb' had blasted through the rubble just fine. I jumped in, and with my vines, I yanked Sarah in with me.

"What are you doing?" she cried out as I i let her go.

I gave her my sternest glare and pointed my sword at 'Caleb'. "Is that Caleb out there? And Mightyena? What happened?"

She stammered yes, and then stammered something about dark energy from Caleb's sword. Speaking of that, I had not seen it yet. Where was that? "Tell me where the weapon is so I can destroy it immediately" I growled.

"A bit late" she replied "It exploded when Caleb became infected with the dark energy and changed". She was breathing quickly, freaking out. I looked back into the room, seeing the shards of crystal all over the floor. It had indeed exploded. Caleb's torn up bag harness was over just inside the entrance, where it would be difficult to see. More crystal shards spilled out of one of the bags. He had extras, it seemed, and the sword had indeed exploded. Small pieces were scattered about the room. Again, I should have noticed that immediately. I think I was just tired.

I was out of practice with my weapons as well. I should have lasted a few more minutes at least against the beast form Mightyena and Caleb.

"Really?" Nincada asked, surfacing right next to us. "Unfortunately, yes" I answered him. "unfortunately, we need to find a way to cure them. Immediately. We can't let them kill each other" I said. Then, I realized what I had just said. They were in fact killing each other.

I ran back out, where the others were. "We can't let them kill each other!" I shouted at them "They've been transformed like that by a dark energy, we can't let either of them die!" They turned towards me. Medicham turned to me. "If what you say is true, then we are going to be in trouble" he said grimly "we do not have the knowledge or the means to do so". He was right. We were in trouble.

My explanation had been lacking details, but we were short on time. They all knew that these two had to be saved, not destroyed. They would kill us if they got the chance, however. Wigglytuff understood the situation, because he did not attack. He stayed back; We all did. We had no way to do this.

"If we let one of them get knocked out, and stall the other before that one delivers the killing blow…" Nincada started. Every one of us save Wigglytuff looked down at the little bug pokemon. "Nincada… That might work" I told him. I was impressed. Nincada was pretty smart. Absolutely nothing could be done now, but later, if we interrupted the battle in time, we may be able to finish this.

We began our retreat for the back of the room. If the fight came here, we would take off for another part of the room. We had to be distant so that we would not catch the occasional energy tail attack, but we had to be close enough to handle the battle once one of them lost.

We would be close enough.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

The guild members retreated. I was very glad. I could not see them much, because the battle between Caleb and I was very involved. I could smell them however, and they were all very much alive.

I had been beyond overjoyed to see that Sarah had survived. I had had no reason to believe she would. She had appeared so lifeless after I had broken her. Her eyes had certainly looked emotionless; Dead. She had lost too much blood to possibly survive, and yet survive she did. I could not be happier.

What I was doing reflected to opposite. My battle with Caleb was going poorly. He was overpowering me over time. I had known he would. Tactics are my strength, and when I am acting without tactics, I am defeated by stronger opponents. In most senses, and absol is stronger than a mightyena. For those reasons, Caleb would beat me.

He lunged with his horn enveloped in a massive night slash. My body responded by jumping straight into it. I mentally winced, realizing that when it came to tactics, my body acting alone was a complete idiot. I was hit hard by the blade, and a massive gash appeared on my chest. When I looked down, blood was coming out of the wound. Quite a bit of it, actually. The pain was immense, but I could not really scream. My head came back up to see Caleb, in front of me, recovering energy, apparently. I immediately charged, slamming him with my entire body and sending him flying back. My tails suddenly whipped around, snagged him, and smashed him down. This was followed by another tackle.

Caleb retaliated by shooting at me in a dark quick attack. I could not so much as blink before I was driven straight into a wall. Rubble covered us both, but we still fought. Neither of us could see the opponent, but we still managed to trade blows and blast away the rubble. An incredibly large shadow ball with red lightning in it formed in front of me. Caleb did the dumb thing: He charged.

Suddenly, he was not directly in front of me anymore. My shadow ball drove deep into the other wall, creating another tunnel before violently exploding. This caused my new tunnel to collapse and create a massive dust cloud. How had Caleb made himself dodge? Was his dark monster form just capable of using logic in fighting?

Caleb suddenly appeared, goring me with that massive deformed horn of his. There was more pain and a visible shower of blood. I had thought this battle had been about to turn around. Apparently not. I crashed into the wall painfully, and then almost dropped. I caught myself and immediately charged again. My three tails whipping about, putting small wounds into Caleb constantly, but they were simply minor annoyances to Caleb. Caleb's attack, however, were causing quite a bit of damage. All I was doing to damage the guy really was all the tackles I had put into him. I did not use quick attack for some reason.

I lunged at Caleb, only to be met with his blade like energy tail that put a horrible cut in my face, and I could no longer see out of one eye. The pain in my eye was so immense, even my new form reacted to it

I roared with pain, causing everything to slide backward from me. It was just like the roar that Luxray had used. I could apparently use roar now. Caleb seemed to be unaffected by it. Only able to see out of one eye, depth perception was a thing of the past. That being said, I did not actually know how close Caleb was to me until he slashed at my fur with a massive shadow claws. He succeeded in cutting me even more. More blood splattered the ground.

Suddenly, I felt faint. I was losing. I would fall unconscious in a minute. Caleb would win. Then, if unopposed, he would kill me. He raised a massive paw and basically punched me in the face. I slid away, blacking out in the process.

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

Mightyena slid to a stop. He was bleeding, and he was in bad shape. Caleb had really done a number on him. His eyes were closed. One eye had been sickeningly obliterated by one of the attacks.

Caleb started to walk forward. I realized what was happening. Servine did as well. "Attack!" we shouted together. The whole group launched themselves at Caleb. I fired my greatest flamethrower, Servine launched an intense magical leaf, Nincada, Medicham, Jake and Wigglytuff launched themselves forward.

Something terrible happened. Caleb lifted his head and roared. My flamethrower and Servine's magical leaf were blasted away by the intense force. Nincada, Medicham, and Jake were tossed away. Wigglytuff stood his ground against it, but that proved to be a mistake as an energy tail whipped around and sliced open his stomach. We watched in horror as Wigglytuff halted and held his stomach in pain. Blood came out of wigglytuff's wounds. He could not jump forward immediately. Caleb reached Mightyena. I was still building my next attack, Jake had only enough time to generate a weak electric attack that was harmlessly absorbed by Caleb. Servine had summoned her weapons again, not realizing that that would happen. Nincada was over in the corner, recovering. Medicham was wincing and holding his shoulder where he had been tossed through a rock.

Caleb brought one single paw up in the air, and that awfully serrated shadow claw appeared. We screamed in the effort to get back up and push, but we could not just do that. My flamethrower was spent, and I started charging up a water pulse.

It was way, way too late. Caleb brought down his claw to finish the fight. Those of us who could covered our eyes. I had to watch. Caleb stabbed Mightyena, instead of slashing him. The blades went paw deep into Mightyena side.

_Not Mightyena… Please don't kill him…_

At the same time, Wigglytuff was hit by the tail again. A new, so much deeper wound appeared a few inches higher than the last. The others rushed to help him, Servine preparing a cast of sorts with vines to maybe stop the bleeding. All I could look at was Caleb and Mightyena. Mightyena's heart would have been punctured by that attack. I only knew where Mightyena's heart was because it had resonated out to me as he was transformed. If the shadow claw was pulled out, Mightyena would bleed to death.

Instead, Caleb did something different. Dark energy began to circulate between the two pokemon. Then, it began to flow into Caleb. Caleb was draining Mightyena's dark energy. I watched as pure black hatred flowed out of Mightyena and straight into Caleb. It was only a few moments before Mightyena began to shrink. As the dark power flowed away from Mightyena, Mightyena began to revert back to his normal form. Wigglytuff was down, meaning that we could no longer heal ourselves. Caleb was about to become impossibly powerful, and Mightyena would die in the process.

Wigglytuff suddenly pushed the others away. "Do not worry, friends!" he said "i will survive, but I cannot help like this. Only one of you can use this…". A pink aura energy came away from Wigglytuff's body, and Wigglytuff coughed. "Only one of you are capable of learning this, and so you must put it to good use…"

Wigglytuff grabbed the swirling light out of the air and threw it. At me. I stood still and watched it. Caleb's actions were in the background now. What was this thing Wigglytuff was giving me? I almost decided I did not care, but Caleb would succeed with his actions anyway. I raised a paw as the light sailed towards me. It hit me outstretched paw, and a warmth spread through me. Something popped into my head, a technique that I never thought I could know. The power surged through me, made me stronger.

Wigglytuff had just somehow given me his Heal Pulse technique.

What could I do with this? I could save Mightyena, that's what I could do. Then, I could heal Wigglytuff. Knowing what to do, I sprinted forward immediately. Mightyena would not have long to live after Caleb retracted his claws. Mightyena looked almost normal again, though his fur was still black. That was turning it's normal black and white coloring quickly, however. Caleb was almost finished absorbing the dark energy.

When I was halfway there, Mightyena no longer gave off any dark power. He was saved from that. Hopefully, he was saved from that forever. Caleb's claws were now completely through Mightyena's body, due to the fact that Mightyena had shrunk. Caleb's shadow claw began to retract. I only had a few seconds. I could give no time away. Somehow, Caleb had apparently not noticed me.

I rushed towards Mightyena and immediately began to use heal pulse on him. Caleb's claws disappeared the moment I did. Mightyena's blood flew back into his body as his wounds were repaired amazingly quickly. His eye was repaired. Within a few moments, he was in perfect health. He just slept. I looked back at Caleb, and he was not moving at all. He seemed frozen in place. Grabbing Mightyena's scruff, I dragged him slowly towards the others. I was aware that the others were just staring between me and Caleb, but I managed to get back to them.

"That was… Mightyena?" Medicham asked, his usual cool shattering for a moment, before trying to steel his emotions again. "Yep…" I muttered before dropping him at the psychic type's feet. I then turned my attention to Wigglytuff, who was in need of some healing. I generated the power again, and sent the pulse out of my mouth and into Wigglytuff. Because the guildmaster was not so badly damaged as Mightyena, the healing was much faster.

"Thanks, friend!" Wigglytuff shouted gleefully as he bounced up to his feet again. Medicham picked up Mightyena in his arms. "I will take him to safety" he promised, before running around the statue still Caleb. Caleb actually was not moving at all. His paw was still where he had pulled it out of Mightyena. "What's wrong with him?" Servine asked. I had no idea. Caleb was just not moving.

"Besides the fact that he turned into a rampaging shadow monster?" I asked "Let's figure out how to fix him instead". I walked towards Caleb. "Caleb, Come on, wake up" I told him.

"Hang on… That's Caleb!?" Jake asked behind me. I nodded without looking back. "Wha-" he asked, and suddenly he looked quite worried. "Just help me fix him!" I exclaimed in exasperation. "We can explain the situation later" I heard Servine tell Jake. Caleb's paw slowly came to the ground now. Something scary happened when it actually made impact.

**BOOOM!**

The ground shook when Caleb's paw slowly touched down. The shaking did not stop for a long time. Caleb was moving slowly, but there was an impossible amount of power in his movements. It was like he was moving normally, but in slow motion. He had the same speed and power as before. Maybe it would stay that way, and we could knock him out.

As the dust expanded, my sight was clouded by dirt. I coughed a bit, and backed away. The dust began to clear when I forced a current of wind through the cavern. I was getting better at that, but it was still not the way I was supposed to use razor wind.

As the dust cleared, a massive, very angry face appeared right in front of me. Caleb was right there. I froze in fear, as did the others. Caleb growled at me now, making the ground vibrate. It seems he had sped up again. I was absolutely frozen in fear, as i'm certain the rest of them were. If Caleb had actually attacked, i'm not sure Servine would have been able to grab me with vines in time. What actually happened was so much worse.

I'm the team healer now, not Wigglytuff. I should not be so close to the danger.

Caleb staggered back suddenly, growling in what could have been pain. I wanted to try and reason with him, but Servine now yanked me back with her vines. She summoned her grass energy weapons again and prepared for battle. Caleb was not attacking us yet, however. I saw his dark aura expand, and suddenly he roared again. What I saw next was just as terrible as when Mightyena transformed. With a mighty BOOM, His muscles bulged in his body, becoming incredibly obvious to everyone. He began to grow again.

With each bulge his muscles made, his skin conformed to the size of them until he barely fit in what remained of the cavern. His horn grinded at the roof, and the serrated part became even more deadly looking. His paws were almost bigger than I was. His muscles bulged underneath the fur, and the fur looked stretched. His fur was longer than before, making a mat of grey fur. He looked like a monster.

One at a time, we realized what had just happened. Caleb had just gotten several times bigger, and clearly so much stronger. We were in trouble. He roared, and we all slid back from the sheer dark energy flying out from Caleb. Even Wigglytuff winced this time.

Caleb suddenly focused on us again. Another crack appeared on the piece in his forehead, making an 'x' mark with the two uneven cracks. It looked terrible, how broken he looked. Yet, he moved like there was no problem. There was no way he was fit to travel, but the dark power controlling him was making him continue. And continue to fight he did.

"He's going to attack!" Servine warned. Caleb in turn raised a single massive paw and thrust it at Servine incredibly quick. Jake and I jumped to either side while Servine jumped and slashed at his paw. She smashed it immediately afterward. The damage was minimal, however. Caleb raised his massive paw again, with Servine on top of it. Caleb went for a Night slash again, resulting in him hitting his own paw as Servine jumped away. I have never seen Servine fight like this.

Caleb's paw was not badly ripped up, with blood oozing from the wound. It looked disgusting, and no pokemon would be able to walk on it with a wound like that. Caleb, forced into these actions by dark energy, put it on the ground and began to use it immediately. Each step he took then cause more blood to ooze out of the paw.

It was horrible, how he kept moving after that. This energy would get Caleb himself killed, before or after he killed us. "Caleb!" I called to him "Please! Shake it off!"

"Don't be ridiculous" Servine said "We need to do it". She brandished her sword and ball and chain at Caleb. I didn't like that, but she was right. I hated it when she was right. I scowled. "You stay back" Servine commanded me "you will need to heal us if anything happens. Wigglytuff can't do it anymore. Furthermore, you don't seem to want to fight Caleb. So, you stay back".

So I did. I jumped away when Caleb's now even larger energy blade came around at me, and I stuck to the wall for the moment. I landed near some crystal shards that had gone unburied in the rubble. I stayed away from them for the moment

I could only wait for someone to get hurt now. I had to stay safe.

⽛ Mightyena's POV ⽛

I woke up slowly. There was a bright light in my eyes, oranged colored. It actually felt rather soothing. My first thought was about the lack of nightmares. Why was I spared from nightmares tonight? Why was it so bright in our home?

_Because i'm not home. That's right, I was…_

I was hurting everyone else. I was fighting Caleb. I was being knocked out by Caleb. My eyes opened completely to see a rather impressive sunset. All sorts of orange and yellow colors and the clouds in front of the sun. It looked beautiful. There was no worries looking at that sunset. No problems. No pain.

_No pain._

I was not in pain. No pain at all. In fact, I felt just fine. Real strength coursed through my body. My first moments without pain since I was shocked by Crystal Star. I felt… Good. I felt better. I no longer felt the way I did before I met Caleb and Sarah. Now the pain was gone. I had a chance to be a better person now.

I was on my back. My paws were in my vision. They looked normal. They no longer looked messed up, distorted. I no longer had any claws anymore. I clenched my teeth, and no longer felt them pierce my mouth. They were normal again. I tried to move. My legs bent and stretched easily. No difficulty was had.

_Wasn't there something I was supposed to do? There was something important, right?_

My eyes opened really wide. Everyone was in danger! I was just lying here like an idiot! I lept up to my feet. I had to get back to the cave now. Where was it? There it was a distance away. Practically the moment I noticed it, a horrible roar erupted from it.

"Do not go yet" a voice said behind me. I whirled around to see Medicham. "What are you stopping me for!?" I demanded "They'll die if we don't go back! What are you doing out here anyway! I was safe being knocked out here! Get yourself over there, and i'll follow you!"

He seemed to recoil a bit, but he hid it behind that normal, ever so infuriating calm that he wore constantly. Seeing that it infuriated me even after my little change of heart, I can imagine now that it annoyed others as well. This idiot was not as calm as he wanted to make anyone believe. Nevertheless, he had some good advice sometimes. Not this time. This time, he wanted answers.

"What happened?" he demanded. I scowled at him for a moment, mostly because he was being annoying. I let that die for the moment. "You'll find out what happened after we help the other stay alive" I growled "If you're lucky. You want to talk while the beast that used to be my friend kills everyone? Please, don't waste everyone's time".

With that I bolted away from the fighting type. I could hear him following me, but he was nowhere near fast enough to stop me, and his psychic attacks would not do a thing to me. A shame for him. I heard another unearthly roar, and the very ground trembled at the force of it. My speed slowed as I fought the waves of power erupting from the cavern. There had not been such power before. What had happened?

As I fought my way in, I saw something awful. Caleb had grown to almost three times his initial monster size. His muscles sickeningly bulged, visible easily through the fur. I could only be glad that he was not damaged too badly. His right front paw was badly bleeding and damaged. Servine was jumping around the other paw, swinging a leaf blade, as well as a freaky spiked ball and chain also made of grass type energy. I have never seen her fight like that, but she did not seem to be doing much damage to the monster absol.

Caleb was attacking everything in sight. Friends, the walls, everything. Sarah was hanging back, probably because she did not want to fight Caleb at all. I could smell Nincada, and several small 'x' shaped cuts in Caleb's longer fur suggested he was fighting. Wigglytuff stayed a distance away, and if anyone were to get hurt, he would blast Caleb a distance using hyper voice, allowing Sarah to… jump forward and use a heal pulse!? How was she able to use that attack?

Now I rushed in, hurling a shadow ball at the monster to get it's attention. Caleb whipped his head to the side, staring right at me. Fear shot through me as I saw his messed up face. Another crack had appeared on his forehead piece, making an 'x' pattern. It's red eyes acted like spotlights. the serrated parts on his body were even more deadly looking. He was so much bigger. I had just angered him.

"**GRRRRRRRR…**" Caleb growled at me. Once again, the ground shook. I got rid of my fear for the moment. We just had to knock him out, right? Things had worked out after Caleb had taken me down before. Caleb brought one paw up, a deadly shadow claw appearing out of his claws with a shank noise. He brought the blades down on me. Using quick attack, I was not there when he obliterated the ground there. I lunged then, sinking my teeth into the top of his paw, stood there, and hung on.

"Don't be stupid!" Servine yelled at me "He'll attack himself if he has to!"

_Ah, crap._

Caleb lifted me into the air, his massive, damaged face glaring at me. His horn became enshrouded in a massive night slash. The growing blade struck the ceiling and pushed through. His fangs bared, he prepared to kill me.

I got away just as he struck, cutting a gash in his own paw. His roar threw me away in a different direction, however. I scrambled to my feet, looking at the damage. I had not noticed, but the other paw had already been damaged in a similar way. Caleb was walking on both of them just fine. Nobody should have been able to walk on feet or paws that badly messed up. Yet, he was walking on them. The dark power controlling him wouldn't care about that I guess.

Having landed near Sarah, I gave her my best apologetic look, which I guess is not that good. She did not glare at me however, just looked a touch sad. I had probably scared her, but even she was not the type to misunderstand the situation. She knew I was not to blame. Caleb became preoccupied with Wigglytuff as he blasted Caleb across the room with hyper voice.

_My poor ears…_

When Caleb whirled to attack Wigglytuff, I shot him with a shadow ball. Caleb was easily distracted, though I bet he would do better if he was not in a rampage. Again, his gaze scared me a bit. This energy was the same stuff that had brought me pain for so long. Of course I was afraid of it. His horn became enveloped in night slash, but he was way too far away to hit me.

At least, that's what I thought before he swung his horn and somehow launched the attack at me. My eyes widened, and I probably would have been cut in half if Servine had not grabbed me with vines. The launched attack exploded against the ground with a mighty BOOM. Night slash was a physical attack, meaning it was meant to be used as one. Why could Caleb throw his? Did his being human before have something to do with it?

Caleb was ridiculously strong, even for an absol, and him suddenly having a long ranged attack did not help matters. If we could just distract him long enough…

But unfortunately, Caleb started to become wise to our trickery. When I had been turned into a monster, there had been no tricks. No tactics. Caleb was a slightly different story. Our regained confidence changed to horror as Caleb started to take us apart.

It started with him getting used to me and Wigglytuff blasting him from different sides. Wigglytuff was doing the damage, and I was distracting him. He managed to get out of that issue by making me vacate my location with a thrown night slash, then occupied that spot and started throwing more attacks. Dodging them became a chore.

Suddenly, any hope we had of knocking him out was lost in the wind. He started moving really fast, activating a dark quick attack at Wigglytuff, who took quite a hit and bounced against the wall. The guildmaster was now flat on his face.

Wigglytuff was a terrifying, ridiculously strong pokemon. The idea that he could be hurt by Caleb right now was also terrifying. Then, his tail whipped at me at insane speeds. I could not avoid it well. When I tried to jump, my leg exploded in pain, and landing on all fours was a huge mistake. My back left leg couldn't even touch the ground without making me collapse. When I looked back, I really wished I hadn't. I swallowed my disgusted scream.

_My paw…_

Sarah was suddenly there. She looked in horror at my paw, or lack thereof, and immediately began to charge a heal pulse.

She never got to launch it. She was smacked aside by a massive paw and sent sailing over by Wigglytuff. Always one to take advantage of a situation, she instead healed Wigglytuff. My vision of the two was suddenly obscured by Caleb, who, when I looked up, was staring down at me. His serrated teeth were bared. He was about to eat me, I think.

I could not run fast with only three usable legs. I tried to, but Caleb's tail wrapped around me. The blade pierced me in several spots. My destroyed leg was squished inside the tail. It hurt really bad. I shouted in pain, unable to focus with my leg in so much pain.

He prepared to bite my exposed head off. I prepared a shadow ball and tried to shoot it at Caleb's mouth. I missed. Caleb lunged forward, only to get blasted aside by a spike ball. "Sorry i'm late!" Servine yelled as she distracted Caleb. I now had to get out of Caleb's tail, which was crushing me. My aim was a little off because of the pain in my leg, but after two tries, I cut off the energy tail with a shadow ball. I collapsed, searing pain erupting through my leg.

Caleb was distracted by Wigglytuff again, and Serving ran to me. "Are you all ri- Oh my god! Your paw!" I groaned in response. "Yeah" I said, before Sarah showed up. She glanced at my leg before launching a heal pulse again. This time, she was successful. My leg stopped reminding me of the pain as my paw was regenerated.

Caleb chose a different attack on Wigglytuff, this time trying to use Shadow claw again. Again, Wigglytuff's typing made the attack useless, but we had time now to regroup as he kept trying. Servine was here, Sarah was here, I was here. Where was Jake?

The raichu was climbing out of the rubble that had fallen on him. He looked to be having difficulty. His tail was trapped underneath a boulder. I rushed to fix that, and did what I could to push the boulder enough to let Jake tear his tail away from the rubble.

"Uh… Thanks" he said. He was a bit afraid of me it seems. I imagine he has not really even had a full conversation with me since I met Caleb and Sarah. "Don't worry about it" I told him before spinning around to check on Caleb. His tail was beginning to whip around again, messing with Servine and Sarah while Wigglytuff kept him at bay with hyper voice. Every explosion that Wigglytuff caused made more rocks fall from the ceiling.

Suddenly, we could only watch as everything went wrong. Caleb's tail whipped at Wigglytuff, and cut him badly. It did it again, cutting away Wigglytuff's ear. Servine yelled and rushed forward, only to get smacked down and held by a giant paw as Caleb whirled around. His tail lost interest in Wigglytuff and focused now on Me. It was just so fast. It was impossible. Was Caleb hiding his speed the whole time?

Jake jumped in the way. I wanted to say 'don't be stupid', but it was way too late. Jake's tail glowed white and when the glow faded an instant later, it was silver and reflective.

**CHANG!**

Jake's iron tail caught the blade, though a large, seven inch deep gash was in it. Caleb's tail was caught in it for a moment before he ripped it out. Jake understandably kept his tail in it's iron form, considering that if he dropped the iron change, pain would shoot through him. Sarah got busy with her new heal pulse while I got in the way and shot a few shadow balls. Caleb went away from the bleeding Wigglytuff to come kill us, and so Servine decided to distract him with her weapons.

"**YOOM…**"

⽕ Sarah's POV ⽕

The sound echoed throughout the chamber. It echoed throughout the chamber, despite my love's growling and all the crashing. I checked on the others. Servine and Caleb were both distracted, whipping their heads about to find the source of the noise. Mightyena was keeping an eye on Caleb, while Jake was checking his tail after I had healed it. He had not even noticed the noise, despite his large ears.

"**YOOM…**"

Jake noticed this time. He froze in fear, a fear I had not even seen after his dimensional scream. He whipped his head around, previous tail injury forgotten. it was not as bad as Mightyena's paw getting cut off, anyway. I had healed it. The noise now scared the crap out of the little mouse, though.

"**YOOM…**"

I realized that it was somebody saying it. About the time I figured that out, I realized that only one pokemon could be saying it, the one Caleb was obstructing. Pure power filled the air, though the dark power already there practically ate it up. Small explosions appeared in the air.

"**YOOM…**"

The room started to rumble, and more small explosions filled the air. Caleb was distracted by each and every one of them. I was focusing on Wigglytuff, however. Fully restored somehow, he was bent over, and muttering. Pure energy exuded from him. I'm glad that Caleb no longer had an attention span.

"**YOOM…**"

Now the ground was detonating randomly, creating small mushroom clouds. What was this? I watched the guildmaster, as we all did, realizing that he was about to get serious. "Uh oh…" Jake muttered "We might have to run…"

"**YOOM… YOOM… YOOM TAH!**" Wigglytuff shouted, and the entire scene flashed white. We all yelled in surprise and a little fear. When the flash ended, Wigglytuff was just standing there. His eyes…

_He looks… Serious. The fear I feel… He was scary before this already._

"Everyone!" he yelled, making us jump "We must knock Caleb out! We must save him!" After a stunned silence, we realized that we once again had a chance of beating Caleb and saving him. We gave a collective cheer and charged into battle. Wigglytuff drew a deep breath before unleashing an incredible hyper voice on Caleb, who flew straight into us. Now, I joined the fight. I got in front and used protect, so that the state of immobility I was in would stop him short.

Mightyena followed up by jumping and launching a massive shadow ball, twice as big as before. Servine darted around and gave Caleb a couple blows to the head with her weapons before retreating from his snapping jaws. Jake electrocuted him once everyone cleared off, and then I raked a flamethrower across his back.

We kept attacking like that, avoiding his head and tail as much as possible. If anyone got hit, I took a break from burning his back to heal them. Wigglytuff leaped right at Caleb's face, and gave it a good doubleslap. He could even smack around the giant monster that had used to be Caleb. I winced in sympathy for Caleb.

Wigglytuff was still encouraging the others, his normally squeaky, fun loving voice was replaced by the strong, extremely powerful guildmaster that he was when things got really serious. He scared all of us, but we still rallied to him. Caleb had managed after a time to get up, but he was actually starting to get beat up a bit. So, we continued our task. It hurt to hurt him, but nothing could be done about it.

Things started to go bad for me within an instant, though we had gotten several minutes in of 'beat up Caleb as much as possible'. What happened was, Wigglytuff's hyper voice was getting more powerful than before. I was clipped by it, because I stupidly tried to get a shot in. Spinning about in the air, I could only see a blur. Then, I saw a bunch of black.

Caleb's tail whacked me in the head really hard, and I was sent spinning into a boulder. I broke through it, my head spinning. When my vision cleared, Caleb was right in front of me. A shadow ball exploded on his face, but he was focused on me this time. He brought a paw up.

_Caleb…_

Caleb brought his paw down.

* * *

I woke up slowly. There was little noise for some reason. I was confused. Was the battle over? I groaned as my eyes opened. I was in a pile of small pieces of rubble. I blinked a few times as I got up slowly. My whole body hurt, probably from being stepped on. I looked about.

My breath caught in my throat. I saw the others. They were lying on the ground. All of the were hurt. All of them were unconscious. Nobody moved. I saw Caleb, he was up and walking slowly. His legs were messed up, and his paws and face looked like the fight had gone for a long time. Burn marks covered his body. He was walking away from the others.

I looked towards his destination. Wigglytuff was there, several wounds on him, but again, nothing life threatening. The guildmaster was unconscious. He was on his face. I could not believe had had been defeated. Caleb was about to kill him.

"No!" I yelled, thankfully catching his attention. His head whipped towards me, Tail whipping about. He started to walk towards me. "I know that you know what you're doing" I told him "i know you can stop yourself. You're the strongest person I know. Please, Caleb, get ahold of yourself!"

Caleb continued to walk towards me, not making a noise besides his massive footsteps. "I can tell that you are still you inside!" I yelled "i know that you are stronger. Stronger than Mightyena, stronger than Servine, or Jake, you're stronger than me! You can defeat this, Caleb!"

No reaction. Caleb now stood over me. There was some blood on his fangs and horn. His claws had some as well. Jake shifted in the background, lifting his head to view the situation with uncomprehending eyes.

Caleb moved a single paw to my side and turned it sideways. "Caleb, wake up!" I yelled at him "Please, wake up! Nothing you are doing is your fault. I want you to know that! CALEB!

Jake's eyes widened extremely wide when I said that. Was this another one of his visions? Why had he not told anybody? I decided to try again. "CALEB!"

Caleb batted me away, sending me straight into the wall, and the brittle surface broke. I was half buried in the stones. I went to scramble out, and landed in a heap on the ground, right on top of something small and sharp.

It was a crystal shard. I was about to leap away from the scary item, when I noticed something weird. It was green. Glowing green, with a small white light within. The same green light the sword had contained when I had carried it in the sky tower. What did that mean?

Caleb stood above me. His paw raised, his massive, deadly shadow claw prepared to cut me into several messy pieces. I was too afraid to move, and I suppose I knew that there was not really any hope. Jake had fallen back over, his energy spent. Even Wigglytuff had been defeated. Now, I was going to fall too. I might be the first to actually die, but I wanted the others to wake up, to have a chance to get away while I took the hit. I would not run from Caleb.

I looked at him. He had not listened to reason, probably because he could not. He was sick, a sickness that had no cure. I wanted to see him once more, to know that Caleb was still around. I wanted to save him with all of my heart. I loved him, even now, because it was not his fault. Caleb was the best person I even knew. Now he would be the best person I ever would know.

I went to stand. The crystal was there, and for some reason I wanted to pick it up. I can't fathom why, but I did. It's energy felt the opposite of Caleb's. It was warm, it was calm, yet it was still powerful. I could feel it resonating with my very aura. What was this power?

Caleb brought the blades down only to stop short. I looked up, confused. Why wasn't I dead? Caleb's paw was sparking with a green electricity, and his shadow claw had been annihilated. His following roar that could have been pain or anger sent me sliding back. What had just happened?

Caleb was staying off the paw covered in flashing green sparks. When the sparks faded, his fur where it had touched became a slightly lighter grey than before. my eyes crossed trying to see the green item in my mouth. Caleb growled at me. This time, the room did not shudder in response. He had been weakened so easily.

This crystal, it turns green and can stop darkness. What stops the embodiment of hatred and evil?

It was love. It must be. It was the opposite of this evil darkness, and apparently stronger. Love was always stronger. I loved Caleb, and this little item knew it. I focused on how Caleb used to be, how much I loved his personality, his strength, his very existence. The precious item I held glowed ever brighter. It's power strengthened.

We would win. We would win because my love for Caleb was far stronger than the anger and hatred he had felt towards Mightyena for killing me, even if I was not dead. I was not stronger, but my love was. As I realized this, I realized that I could let him go now. I wanted Caleb to be happy, not to be here. That was true love.

At the same time, I realized that I would go the rest of my life with a hole in my heart, thinking what if. What if was the question. I would never truly recover, but maybe Caleb would. Maybe Caleb could be happy.

But as soon as I had that hope, I realized that Caleb may not be happy back home. Caleb was going back for his family. It was his duty to do so. He had told me so many things about the human race, and not too many of them were good. I got the feeling that Caleb had been keeping even darker things from me. Anyone would have frozen in nothing but fear, and maybe protectiveness at someone's death. Caleb had acted angry, dangerous. It was like he had a concept of murder. Was it more common there?

Caleb was never happy when he spoke of the human world, other than the one time he talked about his mother in detail. He had smiled then. He never talked about other things. About things you would expect one to talk about more often. What was his life like? All he said was that he had given up his precious childhood to help others and himself succeed. No, Caleb would not be happy there. He would go to see his family, assure them that he was alright, and then what? Just like me, his question would be what if.

What if he stayed? He would have betrayed his family. What if he left? He would live his life in doubt about the world he had left. He would live knowing that he had left friends behind. It saddened me to know that I was not one of those friends. I had been little of a friend to him. All I had been was pushy. Within this moment of clarity, I realized that even knowing this, it would be hard to stop myself from trying to be with him if he stayed. I had little self control. Hearing Mightyena's heartbeat, and then my own, that hurt me. I wanted to cry just like the time I had when I first discovered what I could best sense.

Caleb would be destroyed either way. He knew it. He always knew. That as well as his selflessness allowed him to focus on others, try to distance himself so that no one would share his pain. He had failed, and he knew that, too. Not only was there pain to be found in us, Caleb had even more things to be broken down about.

And from what I knew, he could not even talk about it. He had answered my initial questions about his world freely. Humans would laugh and laugh if he ever tried to tell them what happened. It would just be in his mind. The only way for him to cope, maybe that was to pretend that it was just in his mind. However, I know Caleb. Not even he can trick himself.

I felt sympathy for him. So much. The feeling transferred to the crystal I held. It's green glow began to spread out in streams, like dozens of small rivers in the air, stemming from it. It swirled around the room, and Caleb recoiled from the storm like it was poison gas. He lept to the center of the room, away from everyone, to steer clear of the literal storm of emotion whirling around the edges of the room.

I knew what to do. I truly had a chance to save him now. I walked towards Caleb, the green aura enveloping me along the way. I brought the very storm with me. A storm of pure love and sympathy in energy form. As the storm bore on Caleb, he roared and reared back as the clouds began to touch him. Green sparks traveled across his body, turning the fur light grey and then white.

The effect took many minutes to finish it's job. First, the serrated parts on Caleb's horn, claws and teeth vanished into smoke, a smoke which was completely annihilated by the storm. Caleb's roars no longer bore any force. His muscles no longer bulged in his fur. Blood on his paws vanished as his wounds were closing. I allowed myself a glance at the others. They were being healed as well by the intense storm. Energy whipped around me. Without a grasp on the situation, someone would draw the conclusion that it was dangerous. My fur, particularly the lengthy fluff on my chest and neck, whipped about in the wind.

Caleb's head tossed about as he roared in evident pain. The dark, thoughts possessing him was what was being hurt, not Caleb, and I was vanquishing that. I could only wait for it to disappear. The entire time that the crystal did it's work, I thought about Caleb, about what I wanted, and about what he wanted. I would let him go; My gift to him. Something to remember me by. As for me, I would always remember. Maybe the pain would go away one day. Maybe.

Caleb began to shrink. His fur was white again. His horn twisted and bent back to it's original shape. His forehead piece repaired itself. I neared him as he started to shrink faster, almost moving away from me in the process. Nevertheless, I reached him just as he became a normal size. His thrashing slowly stopped. He was just standing there, shivering the rest of the dark sparks away. The last bolts of dark power leaped from his body and then disappeared into the wind. The crisis was finally over. My storm began to calm down. There was no longer any dark energy to convert. It was over.

The crystal fell from my mouth as I then clasped Caleb's scruff in my teeth to prevent him from collapsing. After a few moments, waiting for the storm to dissipate into the air, I realized that now was the time to have self control. I gently laid Caleb down on the ground. He was snoring away, peacefully. I was able to see him like that again, just as I had wanted to. I took control over myself and walked away a few yards. Halfway to where I meant to sleep and wait for Caleb, My energy disappeared and I collapsed.

⌁ Jake's POV ⌁

I woke up slowly. One of the last things I had heard before fainting was Sarah screaming 'CALEB!'. It had been the same as in my dimensional scream Both parts of what I had heard occurred at different times. I felt so, so bad. I could have warned about the monster, about the screams. I had not. Why hadn't I? Because I was scared, that's why. The defeater of countless outlaws, and having beaten both Palkia and Dialga at one point, afraid. Because that was what I was. I was a coward. Without Swampert by my side, I would have turned and ran both times.

Now, I did not even want to open my eyes. I was alive. I had somehow been spared. I knew that by trying to reason with Caleb, Sarah could only have died doing it. I imagine that the others died as well, those that had not apparently played dead well enough. I had been too afraid this entire fight to launch more than a few high powered lightning bolts. I was capable of so much more. Why had I failed? It should be me in Sarah's place. She had courage, a reason to fight this battle. She had sacrificed herself. To no avail.

My body was covered with rocks. My tail was underneath another boulder. I was done just sitting around. Better get the dead out of here. Better find a way to keep Caleb from destroying them. Better find a way to about Caleb. I powered up my iron tail, remembering the incident where it had almost gotten chopped in half, and moved away from the large piles of rubble. I needed to be done being afraid. I had to grow up a bit. This could never happen again around me. I swore it.

After a long time and a lot of effort, because my paws are tiny and useless physically, I eventually pulled myself to the surface and blinked my eyes open. The room was a mess. The others were half buried. There was Servine, Mightyena, Sarah, Nincada, Wigglytuff, Caleb…

_Hang on, what?_

Caleb was right in the middle of the room. He looked normal again. I blinked. Sarah was nearby him, lying on her right side and her horn was stuck in the ground. The others, they looked fine. What had happened?

"Guys?" I croaked, realizing that my throat hurt. When I crawled forward to get the rest of my long tail out of the boulders, I slipped and rolled down the pile of stones I had been in. After that tumble, I landed next to Servine.

"Come on, Servine, get up!" I called, shaking the plant pokemon "please, get up!"

After what seemed like forever, her eyes fluttered open. "Huh… Jake? you're alive I see… Where's the battle now?" she asked. Like me, I guess she had lost hope that it would go well. I looked from Sarah to Caleb and back. "I-I think we won, actually" I stammered. He shifted so that her chin was resting on the ground, and viewed the scene. "Yay…" she muttered before falling back unconscious. She had been delirious too. Never have I heard the girl say 'yay'.

Next I checked on Mightyena. "Come on, wake up!" I shouted into his sensitive ears. The guy jolted awake, and looked at me irritably. "What is it, mouse?" he asked rudely. "I think we won" I told him. His ears pricked at that, and he rolled off of his back onto his belly to look at the carnage. "Look at that" he said tiredly "it had better be over…" He was on the verge of falling back unconscious again. "Don't do that, stay awake!" I yelled at him.

"Wake me in five…" he muttered before his eyes closed again.

_Darn it all. Who's next?_

I was too scared to wake Wigglytuff. Medicham was out cold. I tried to rouse Sarah, but she was way out of action. Something had happened, and I have no idea what. Caleb was next on my list, but he was not about to wake up either.

_Dang it, somebody stay up!_

I wanted to take another nap, but I sent some electricity through my system to wake me up. I had to give up. I could only wait for the others to wake. Maybe it would take a while. I got comfortable on a certain pile of rocks without too many sharp edges and waited it out.

⽯ Caleb's POV ⽯

darkness.

That was what surrounded me. The dark, cold of sleep that I used to have before I had begun to have dreams here. What had happened to me? I felt pain all over my body.

What am I doing?

"Caleb!" a voice shouted to me.

I was promising to destroy that monster that killed Sarah… Sarah. She-

I jolted in my mental state Sarah was dead! She was lying there bleeding and lifeless, and I had just blacked out when I had promised to avenge her.

_Am I dying too?_

Had there been another monster or something? Maybe I had gotten hit from behind. There had been a shattering sound, I remember.

"Caleb, please wake up! Please come back!" the voice said. It was familiar… Who? Who was talking to me? As I felt more energy come back into my body, I realized that I must be waking up. I was not dying. Someone had saved me. Too late for Sarah…

There was a pressure on my side. Ground. I am lying on a bunch of rocks. Not too many of them are sharp. Someone was directly above me. Someone I knew. Who was it? I did not want to open my eyes.

"Come on, Caleb! You need to wake up!" the female voice said. Was it Servine? No, no it was not. Who could it be then? Chimecho? Not her voice. Not any of the other alive people I know.

_I'm going insane if I think…_

"Caleb, please!" she said "It's over!"

I groaned and shifted. Whoever it was stepped back in evident surprise. "It's too late…" I muttered "It doesn't matter… I couldn't save her…"

"You didn't have to" the female pokemon said. This caught my attention. Who would say it was acceptable that she had died? "Wha-" I started, keeping my eyes closed, not using my absol sense.

"Open your eyes, Caleb" she said. I did as commanded very slowly. Within my field of view was Nincada, in front, with the others standing there. Jake, Sarah, Mightyena, and even Wigglytuff. A pokemon I did not recognize stood to one side, who nodded in my direction. None of them had spoken to me, but all were smiling broadly. Why were they smiling?

I shifted slowly to view the person talking. An absol. A red absol. "Sarah?" I asked groggily. "yep!" she said "Safe and sound!". I could not believe what I was seeing. Sarah looked just fine. All of them did. "Where-... Where is that monster? It-It killed you… You were dead…"

"I'm alive" she said, seeming to recognize my blatant disbelief. She had not answered my question about the monster. Now, focusing on that, I realized that as usual, my eyes were not tricking me. Sarah had somehow lived. Wigglytuff must have found her in time. How, when she had lost so much blood? It should not have been possible.

"Did you beat the thing that hurt you?" I asked. She smiled at me. "Yeah, we did" she said. I wondered how. That thing had not been hurt at all, and had k-... almost killed Sarah. I guess Wigglytuff and the others had something to do with it, then. He was extremely powerful, right?

I tried to struggle to my feet. My legs hurt a lot. I groaned as I did so, before looking at the others. I measured their emotions. Jake seemed worried about me, Servine and Wigglytuff were smiling broadly still. Nincada was hard to read. The new pokemon nodded at me again. Mightyena looked… Sad. Why was he sad of all of us? Sarah had made it, right? I looked deeper. under that sadness was anger. Powerful anger. something had gone wrong somehow.

"What is it, Mightyena?" I croaked, drawing the attention from me. Servine realized that something was about to happen, and for some reason, stopped it. "Worry about yourself first" she commanded me, getting in between us. I reluctantly nodded. I checked for my stuff. The room was noticeably taken apart. The entrance buried, other things buried in certain areas. My back was empty. No sword, no bags. The only thing I wore was the armor still. Where was my stuff? There were a few shards on the ground. I guess that they were the remnants of my weapon. A great tool destroyed. There were some berries and poke in my bag that had been buried in the rubble.

I realized then why I was here. I looked about for another exit. One was there, in the corner of the room. After a brief hesitation, I began to walk towards it. The others noticed and followed after a few moments. When I arrived, I noticed that while it had some rubble strewn about it, including a few more crystal shards, it was in acceptable condition. I had to get to where I was going. I had to get home.

I had to see my family again. I had to go back. Sarah seemed to want to talk, but held herself back. I knew why she had come here. She had wanted to stop me. She had almost been killed, and then she had been saved. I did not even want fill in the blanks. If I tried to talk again, I might break down. So I entered the next room. Palkia stood there, next to a rip in the air, glowing pink and looking like a cartoon lightning bolt.

Palkia had been patient. He had waited. Just as I have for so long, longer than I should have to get home. This was it. I was going to go home now. "**You have arrived, Caleb. This gateway will lead to your world" Palkia rumbled "Once this closes, it must remain closed forever. No other entryway to your world will reappear for three hundred and seventy six years. One chance is what I can promise you**".

The power of the rip in space washed over me, my fur moving with the wind. I could lose this fur now. I could become human once more. fifteen more steps, and I was there. Fourteen. Thirteen...

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**Whew! Writing that was interesting for me. What order was i supposed to give character POV's for scenarios? I got there. Oh well. That all went well, honestly. I think I could have made this far worse. Did i do well? I really want to know how I did wrapping up this part of the climax. **

**Thank you all for reading so far into the story. I hope you enjoyed this so far. My next chapter is already coming along well, and may be available before Friday even. **

**Reviews are awesome. So are character bios. If you have anything to say, please say it! **

**Thank you for reading! Have a great day!**

**Character bio setup below! Please send submissions to my PM setup. Thank you!**

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**Nickname:**

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**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

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	24. Chapter Twenty four: The Choice

**Oh, yes. This was all after some huge fight, but it's worth a read, i promise! **

**Again, huge plot chapter. Don't want Hyperjade worrying about random stuff going on. He's a bit tired, too. Guess that's my fault. Oh, well. When things get less serious it's back to messing with him!**

**He's early to come back again to tell this thing. See ya!**

**-Jango**

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**Chapter 24: The Choice**

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

Twelve… Eleven… Ten…

I almost stopped there, to view the others again, but it would only cause pain. Enough pain had been caused already. No more. Nine… Eight… Seven… I had a life to get back to. A home. A family. Six… Five… It was my duty. My job. My obligation. Four… Three… I could barely remember what I looked like. I wanted to check a mirror the moment I got home. Two… One…

I stood in front of it. It was a single step away. It looked like a wall of pink energy, but Palkia had assured me that walking through it would lead to my home. I trusted Palkia. He would not let me down. So many other pokemon I had met stood by their promises. Servine and Mightyena to help me. Palkia to get me home. Sarah to stop me.

I began to think about what I had achieved here. I had taken apart boulders easily. I had wielded impressive swords. I had taken down outlaws, powerful and not powerful. I have watched magic unfold in front of me, unknowing that such a thing was possible. I have seen mighty explosions, have been the cause and sometimes the victim of explosions. I have been torched, blasted, attacked, and had waded through large quantities of weakling enemies.

I had woken up in a freaky magic place full of creatures that no one on earth knew existed. I had been changed. I had fought against foes. I had successfully avoided a lovestruck absol. I had found my way to a place where teams of explorers had constantly saved others, discovered new places, and fought outlaws. I had become one of them for a time. I had taken so much, dealt so much. I had journeyed across the land multiple times. I had faced Palkia, and won his assistance. I had walked across half a country in two days. I was here. I had won.

I had defeated cruel chance. I had defeated my abysmal luck that had landed me here. I had won. How had I won? I suppose I had some luck there as well. I suppose it did not have everything to do with strength. I had won through friendships. Friendships I had needed, but would only cause pain. Will cause pain. Pain **I **am responsible for. It was my fault.

_It is my fault. I have not won. I failed to get out inconspicuously. I should have pushed everyone away. Why did I not? Because I failed to stop my childish need for friendship. I should have been able to push it aside. I did not. _

I looked at the pink wall of energy in front of me. I stared at it, completely silent. I wanted to see through it, but I could not. I was not the hero others saw me as. I was helpful, sure. I had given up things, sure. Yet, I was certainly not a hero. Servine said that I was a good person. No. I could not be. I was only human after all.

_Why do I hesitate?_

I never wanted to deal with this. I wanted to get up and go. If Sarah had not followed me, maybe I would have. Maybe I could have done what I needed to without hesitation. now I hesitating. I was ashamed.

I began to think about what I would do when I got back. Shamefully, I had failed to plan out what I was going to do. Just pop up and say hello? I had disappeared for a month and a half. My life had turned upside down. No chance that my family had fared any better. Their son had just disappeared. No trace. Nothing changed. No sign of struggle. No packed bags. I just disappeared into thin air. What would happen when I returned?

Undoubtedly, there would be panic, yelling, questions. I would not be able to answer any of it. No person would believe me about what I had gone through. There would be a police investigation. There would be something to worry about. There was always something to worry about in my world.

What if they had moved or something? I would go to some random place down the hill and ask where they were. What time of day was it there? It could be the dead of night. It could be morning. It could be midday. My parents could be at work, or doing something.

The way I vanished, option number one was that I ran away, and I would have to go with that. Option number two was that I had died. There may have been a funeral. There may **be **a funeral. What sick timing to walk in on my own funeral.

_What's up! I'm actually alive! Who's that empty casket for? Oh, me? Well… Awkward…_

What a ridiculous entrance. Maybe I was overreacting to something that had not happened yet. Maybe things would be fine, but I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same. I would be at best watched very closely.

I could handle that. I could survive a change like that. I could feign amnesia or something. I was a terrible actor, but maybe I could manage it. Maybe. I could handle being pronounced dead only to show up again. If they just thought I ran away, things would be even more difficult. I had no excuse that people would listen to about my disappearance. Could I fein kidnapping? No. There had been no struggle. I could not fake anything.

So I would have to just say I was going to take a break and take off. My life would essentially be over. I would be watched without any rest. Nobody would trust me. Everything I had worked for. Gone.

I was about to step through anyway. I needed to stop thinking now. Yet, I never stop thinking.

_Where will I end up when I step through?_

This portal could land me anywhere, I realized. It could land me in the middle of the Sahara if I was unlucky. The chances that it would take me where I wanted to go: Zero. I could end up at any point in my planet. Maybe the middle of the ocean. Maybe underground in an inescapable cavern. Maybe if I was lucky I would end up somewhere like france or britain. What if I stepped through this thing and ended up skydiving? Would I die just trying to go through here?

_Not like my life leads anywhere here…_

I prepared to jump through again.

_What is there to suggest that I will succeed where I am going?_

I had already figured out that there was no chance of leading a 'normal' life in the human world, having disappeared. Reality was that success would not be much of an option, especially if I landed in a different country with no way home. I could end up in a country a terrorist organization calls home. That could be the very death of me.

_Death… _

I was scaring myself now. I needed to get out of here fast. I needed to leave immediately. Once again, I prepare to go through the portal, this time raising my right forepaw. Such an accursed thing, that paw. It was supposed to be a hand. It was supposed to be a human hand. Human. That was what I was supposed to be. What I could be again. My paw moved towards the doorway when I heard something. A sob.

With my absol sense, I learned that Sarah was having trouble keeping herself emotionally intact. Her head was down. She was shivering. She was about to lose what she wanted most. I could not let that stop me. What did made me falter again was a thought that contradicted everything I thought I knew about the choice I was about to make.

_What if… What if I don't become a human again when I go home?_

I pictured it. I pictured myself surrounded by humans, still an absol. Somewhere alien to me, surrounded by humans. What would happen to me? Shall I count the ways things would go wrong? First, Human's have cameras. I don't really like having my picture taken to no gain for me, and I would be the next viral video. Then, after several claims of hoaxes, somebody would try to capture me or something. Cages would be something I would see often.

After they were over my existence, recorded my species in some mammal book, probably giving me some stupid name, they would then find something else to do. From there, there were two paths. The first was that I am chased as somebody tries to capture me, and slam me into a zoo. I could escape a zoo with my horn easily, but if I was recaptured, they would use stronger bars, or maybe tougher walls. I would escape again. They would put better materials in my way until I could not escape, living the rest of my life in captivity where they try to find out what I eat. I could tell them, of course.

Upon realizing that I could talk, it would be more questions than what would happen if I actually became human again. What do you eat? What can you do? Who are you? What are you? Where are you from? Are there more of you? Why have we never seen you before? What did you say you were again? Never heard of an absol.

I probably would land in a zoo after that, too. They would want to 'protect' me from whatever 'killed' the rest of my species, in a place where dumb little kids would gawk at the freaky horned white and black mammal in custody. 'Don't get too close' Parents would say 'it may be dangerous'. It. 'It' is what I would become. Why is the new animal in a heavy cage you ask? Because it somehow continues to get out. The bars keep getting cut. A nightmare. That would be my life.

The alternative was almost worse. The alternative was getting hunted down. Some dumbass with a gun decides my head would look great on his wall. I may be resilient, but tough skin won't save me from bullets.

I was as good as dead, if not sentenced to torture by public viewing constantly. Did I have any reason to believe that I would become human again when I returned, that I would not remain an absol? No. No I did not. How could I be so stupid as to assume that things would just be okay if I got home? What a kidder I was. In fact, the possibility that I would remain an absol was probably relatively high compared to what I had initially believed.

I was going to go anyway. I did not have a life here. Why would i? I was not from here. Jake, he belonged. He had a history. He had no memory. he could have a life. I could not possibly have a life here. I was going to jump in.

_What about the dream world?_

If I became human again, would my dreams stop? Would the dream be finished? What of the three people in there? They were clearly living people. Two of them were kids. Would they disappear if I became human again? That would be killing them. It would be murder. How stupid was i, to believe that I would get home without repercussions. I imagined dying, or being imprisoned, or at best being questioned and distrusted, along with potentially killing the three people I was responsible for in my dream world.

I hated myself. I was just a stupid optimist who believed that there was some way to get home. I could, but it was pathetically unfortunate six ways to sunday. Was there a positive to going home? Maybe for others. After all my selfless ideas of trying to help my family. I was kidding myself. I was a worthless, selfish being. I could not do it. I could not make myself go through that portal.

_I'm sorry, everyone. I failed. _

⌁ **Jake's POV ⌁**

Why was Caleb not moving? He had just been standing there for about five minutes. What was he doing? I exchanged glances with Servine and Mightyena. Sarah was crying as silently as possible. Wigglytuff just looked straight ahead at Caleb. Caleb had just stood still. I considered for a moment just blasting him through the portal, save him the confliction, but some serious stuff was clearly going through his head.

I thought about our meeting. It had been incredibly awkward how Caleb had just popped out of nowhere, somewhat like how I had. Nincada and Sarah had shown up, Sarah looking for him. Nincada had been the reasonable one, but sort of blunt about his conveyance of ideas.

By the time I finally got to talk to the guy, he had not been what I was expecting. Unlike so many other pokemon, he was so constantly serious. It had been because he had not lost his memory. The human world was serious. His goal was serious, and nothing could stop him.

_Something is pausing him now…_

Next, I recalled our trip through spacial rift. Caleb had not been so anxious to fight. He had stayed back. Servine had told me that when he was confused, he had rattled off **casualty counts** from wars. Casualty counts! It was insane. No wonder fighting was awkward for Caleb. Too close to home. He stayed back while Swampert took apart enemies with his water pulse using the lustrous orb. Caleb was a very conflicted guy. I had not spent as much time knowing the guy as I had initially wanted to, but I no longer wanted to know so much about the human world.

Caleb now stood in front of his gateway to his home. His world. his bloody, war filled world. Why would he want to go back? Did he even want to?

Maybe I would find out.

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

Caleb was standing there. He had just been around for a month and a half, and he had grown on us. He was a friend. A better person than he thinks. He believes he is not a hero. He has saved people. He has stopped criminals. He was a natural as a pokemon.

I imagined when I met him. Had I not been such a cranky, bossy pokemon when I met him, we might not have become such friends. It was his effect on me, and my growth as a person that made me friends with him. Without Caleb, I would not have figured myself out so well.

We had met on the day before we went on a mini expedition to the waterfall cave to find treasure. I understand that the situation actually was rather traumatizing to Caleb. Something two friends could laugh about years later. One of the friends would be leaving forever. Never to share a laugh. Maybe both would laugh to themselves remembering the times they had, the events they then hated. Never would they see each other again.

When we left the cave, he had been so frustrated that we had shown up on the opposite side of the continent. He just wanted to get home then. Before he had made friends. It had been a mistake for him to do so. It was so unfair for him. He had to avoid us to be successful in his mind, but to actually get there he needed our help.

When we had gone to sky tower, and he had been confused, I learned so much about his world. None of what I heard was good. Wars. Plagues. Horrible things that resulted in death. So many things wrong with his world. Why would he want to go back? Because he had a family. Friends. That was it. if he had no family, he would probably stay without hesitation.

When Caleb had gotten to Palkia, he had handled himself so perfectly that even Palkia was impressed. Caleb had impressed the god of space. It was hardly imaginable that someone could do that. You would have to be just as powerful as them, right? Not Caleb. He had impressed Palkia just by being unselfish. I guess most would be selfish there.

So when Palkia had shown his face again, Caleb had left immediately. Even having friends, he knew it was best to leave without explanation. Sadly for him, Sarah had been there. Sarah had followed him, using Mightyena in the process. Though Mightyena's intention had been to stop Sarah instead, he had been afflicted with a dark power so long before. He had almost killed Sarah, and then Caleb had almost killed all of us in the same dark rage. It was not his fault.

Who's fault was it? Only one person was responsible for everyone being here, making things hard for Caleb. Caleb was now pausing. So much confliction. I could practically feel it emanating from him. Sarah. Sarah was to blame for this.

_Poor Caleb…_

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

When I had met Caleb, he had first been another enemy to snarl at. I had been so terrible, and even managed to enrage the calm, collected Caleb. Twice. He was a better person than I was, and he managed to help me.

When Caleb had said that he wondered why there were such things as problems in the pokemon world. Part of the reason I was so thoughtful about is that I really don't know why I was so terrible in the first place. I had no reason to be. Now something else was bothering me. Servine did not want to Caleb to know what had happened. That was probably smart, but that could have been used to end this indecision. Caleb had been so much better to me than I deserved. So had the shaymin, honestly. I did not deserve such nice treatment.

Caleb had been impressive when he had been in waterfall cave, changing Servine almost as easily as he had changed me. Something I was missing… I blamed Sarah for this. Why? Because she was responsible for the entire scenario. If Caleb failed here, she was the root cause. I had betrayed Caleb, and she was responsible. The childish crush I had on the foolish absol evaporated as I realized that Caleb was the only one of the two I could trust to understand right from wrong, to understand what betrayal means.

It was horrible to know that, to lose the ability to love. Would I ever love again? Would I ever trust my feelings again? Probably not for a while at least. I had led myself to believe that after Caleb was gone, Sarah might love me instead. Caleb had done that for me. He had been kind to try and give me a chance, but that was over now. I knew it in my heart; It was over.

I wondered what was going through Caleb's mind. I was bothered a bit that he had no idea what had happened, even though I had been forced to watch what happened to me, what I did to others. I don't think Caleb saw that, experienced that. He had been so confused, I can only thank Servine for knowing what would happen and stopped me from explaining.

But now Caleb was hesitating, right in front of the portal home. If we had told him what had happened, maybe it would not be so hard on him. Maybe he would have walked through the portal already. I watched him lift a paw, and then to my dismay, he dropped it back on the ground.

_Don't give up now. You're so close! Maybe the human world won't be good, but what about your family?_

Caleb has wants too, I realized. He had been suppressing his wants and personal needs for the good of his family, but now that he was here, all of those wants, needs, and reasons to stay are at the forefront. Again, something that could have been avoided had we not been here, but we were. Caleb was going to fail, and knowing Caleb, I feared in my heart that it would destroy him to do so. An audible noise filled the cavern in the tense silence.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

**Plip…**

The noise caught my ears through my quiet crying.

_Why does it matter? Caleb's going to leave. Why should I check whatever pointless source is making that noise?_

**Plip…**

Caleb would be gone. If he was not already gone. I feared looking up. I feared accepting that it was officially over. That I would never see Caleb again. He was gone forever, and I had not said goodbye. I deserved at least that, right? Maybe I did not.

**Plip…**

The noise was constant, almost uniform. Something was trying to distract me from Caleb. I could not let it. I had to remember everything I had done with Caleb to date. I had met him near crystal crossing. I had seen how strong he was. I had seen how nice he was. One of the first people to ever be nice to me. I had become attached to him immediately.

**Plip…**

I had figured out who he was simply because he had no idea of the mechanics of this world. He had been so ignorant of how things worked here, and yet he stood up for me anyways. When I had tricked him into revealing who he was, it had been a moment of triumph, but I was not affected by who he was.

**Plip...**

When we had joined the guild, I had convinced Caleb to join because I thought that he would have an obligation to stay if he did. Caleb had disproved that, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

**Plip...**

It had led to his success at finding the path home eventually, starting with the discovery of the ancient metal plate and the story of Palkia. Upon hearing this, he arranged a meeting with Lapras and Lapras took all of us to the spacial rift, where Palkia received his Lustrous Orb and promised to help Caleb.

**Plip...**

Caleb waited, and went on adventures with me while we had waited, including being at ground zero of the explosion that had opened Spinda's cafe. Caleb had actually been happy there, having discussions and drinking the thick, evidently tasty drink. I had tried to make discussion with him, but while he had pushed me away before, by this time he was trying to ignore me completely. He felt nothing for me.

**Plip...**

It had been acceptable, and I had led myself to believe that Palkia would stay away much longer than he had. I had led myself to believe that I could get through to Caleb. How wrong I was, that Palkia showed up so soon, and that he left so quickly. I had done the only thing I could: Follow him with the help of Mightyena.

**Plip...**

Beating him there had been a feat in itself, but we had managed. Then, Mightyena finally succumbed to the power that had plagued him the whole time, that he could not even talk about it. He had become a monster. A monster that had almost killed me. In response to seeing me apparently dead, Caleb had become enraged and the hatred had become more dark energy, Caleb becoming a monster as well.

**Plip...**

His anger had not been about me. It had been that an 'innocent' had died before their time. Was I innocent? What made him think I was, and not blame me for his troubles? He had been transformed because of this. He had been changed.

When he had almost killed Mightyena, I had been able to Save Mightyena, but Caleb had drawn even more dark power, becoming an even bigger monster. Why had he drawn power from Mightyena? It was very odd. Odd as it was, he had grown and changed, and I had realized he was no longer the Caleb I knew. Then, I had saved him. I had saved everyone.

_It was sheer luck and I know it. Sheer luck and a little love. Love may be powerful, but I guess good luck is even stronger. _

**Plip…**

What was that noise I was hearing? It was some small impact, only audible through the silence. Water. Water on stone. Where was the water? There was no water here. No water had been present in our fight against what had used to be Caleb. What water was there?

I looked up slowly, my head turned to the right. Mightyena was staring straight ahead. Looking to the left, Servine was doing the same. Jake next to her was shifting a little. Watching the doorway?

I finally looked ahead. To my complete astonishment, Caleb was still standing there. He was statue still at the entrance to his world.

**Plip…**

The sound again. Resonating through the room in the silence, I realized what it was. It should have been impossible. It never happened. The most stoic person I had ever known. Caleb had his head low. I could hear water hitting the stones constantly now. It was becoming more frequent. I stood there, shocked, unable to comprehend what was happening.

Because Caleb was crying. The most stoic person out there. The most serious, closed off person I had ever met. The greatest person and pokemon I had ever met. Caleb was crying silently. I thought I would never see this happen, even if he stayed.

Tears fell from his face, hitting the ground one at a time. I could not see his face, but I could imagine it. Eyes closed, tears streaming down his face. It was because he could not do it. He could not make himself leave. He could not make himself walk through that portal. He was crying because he was betraying everyone he loved in his world, because to him, not leaving was the worst crime of all.

No other sounds besides his tears echoed throughout the room for a long time.

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

Failure. All I could think about. I knew I had failed. I could not make myself go back to the human world. The truth? I liked this place. It was free of war, free of life threatening conflict. Maybe I could have returned home anyways, but there were so many negatives and uncertainties. I had no faith that things would go well for me if I returned. So, I could not.

It hurt me more than anything that I could not. I stood there, realizing that I was about to betray my family, my friends, everything I had, even if it was not much.

_Maybe experiencing the inevitable torture is what I deserve. Will I be lucky enough to actually become human again, to go through the distrust and watchful eyes? Will I get what I deserve, either hunted down or trapped in a cage? Maybe I would not even try to escape the cage. Maybe I should step through this portal..._

Tears were streaming down my face. I have not cried in a long time. Years, maybe. My tears were audible to everyone in the room. Everyone could tell what was about to happen. I deserved what was coming in my world, but I was about to be selfish. I was about to fail. for once, I would let what I wanted control my actions instead of what others needed. It was shameful. It was selfish. It was inexcusable.

I could not handle it anymore. I allowed the tears of frustration, sadness and anger roll down my cheeks. I was not choking up, but it would be moments. I could stand here for the rest of my life, thinking about it, and nothing would change. I could not force myself through.

So I cried. I cried for a long time. I never thought I would stop. Everything else was quiet. Sarah had stopped crying. Maybe she had figured it out. Maybe hope had come back to her at the expense of my failure. The selfish absol… I could have forced myself through without the others here. She had brought them here, probably in pursuit of her, but they were still here, still making my life miserable with their very location of choice.

_Why me? Why not someone who has not spent their life working for a goal?_

Self pity. That was what I was reduced to. Thinking about how it could have been somebody else, and I was certainly right, but if I had the choice to make someone else go through this instead, would I do it? No. No I would not. I would not because I am too **damn **considerate to knowingly ruin someone else's life miserable instead. Why could I not have been someone intolerable, someone with a terrible attitude? It would relieve the pain of failing to leave, for certain.

I gritted my fangs together, looking down at my front paws. Fangs. Paws. Claws, fur, red eyes, horn. I was no human. Self pity consumed me as I waited for myself to completely break down. I waited for myself to drop to the floor sobbing. Instead, I had to say something break the silence. Address the person who had been so kind of me just for me to turn his help down. Maybe he understood. Maybe he knew what was happening to me.

"Close it" I said, my voice shaky. This was it. It was over.

"**If I am to close this gateway, it will never be open for you again**" Palkia warned "**Neither can it remain open forever. Understand that you will be trapped here for the remainder of your life**"

"Just close it!" I sobbed. My tears began falling faster. After some time of regaining my composure somewhat, I whispered "Please understand, Palkia…". Afterwards, I broke down where I stood. Thirty seconds passed of silence, before Palkia raised one massive hand. "**I understand perfectly, young absol. You need not fear of offending me, Caleb**".

His hand glowed brightly for a moment, and the portal in front of me zapped out of existence with an effect not unlike an old television turning off. It was over. I was officially a resident of this insane world.

_I have no life here, even if I did not have one before. I have no purpose. No point. Why do I stay still? I should just go. Go and lay down somewhere. Alone. Think. Sleep. Maybe I will just stay asleep. That might be nice…_

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Caleb… Was staying. I could not believe it. He had told Palkia to close the portal. For some reason, joy was not the very first emotion I felt. I was worried. Caleb had just given up everything. He was crying about it. It had not been because he felt an obligation to stay instead of having an obligation to go, he had stayed because he wanted to. He knew the responsibility for him to return home was immense, but he could not make himself leave. What would that do to him?

We waited in silence for so long, it was terrible to see. He just sobbed, standing there for half an hour. The sun had finished setting. He was still crying. I did not blame him. I felt so sorrowful about what he must be feeling. Eventually, some joy had crept up about how he was staying. I had realized that there was a chance, but I had to be respectful now. We all did.

No one moved a muscle. Not even Nincada was fidgeting around. His face was difficult to read, but I suspected that he was in the same boat as the others. Servine looked sad. Wigglytuff's ears were not perked straight up, and his eyes had a sadness to them. Mightyena was statue still, his head lowered a bit, his eyes shadowed and difficult to see. Medicham was the only unemotional one.

The annoying psychic type started to move towards Caleb, his footstep clearly audible by everyone. Six pairs of eyes turned at him. Five glaring at him, Wigglytuff giving one of his strange looks. Medicham halted in an instant.

After a few more minutes, I guess Caleb decided to wrap up his crying after hearing the footstep. After a time, he turned away from where the portal used to be. He did not turn to us, but I could see his eyes.

My heart almost stopped. It was heartbreaking, his expression. His eyes had no life to them. Nothing at play in his mind. His eyes… They looked dead. My breath caught. So did Servine's. Mightyena still had that shadow over his eyes. He did not even acknowledge us. He simply began to walk away.

We let him. There was no discussion. He walked towards the hole in the wall where the sunset had been. In any other circumstances, the sunset and the location would have been amazing. Maybe someday I will visit this place and view it for real. For now, Caleb walked unopposed away, out of the cavern, and off to who knows where.

Palkia looked away from him and settled his gaze on us. "**If Caleb requires me again, I will gladly assist him. For now, this is farewell to all of you. I take my leave**". With that, Palkia charged his transportation energy and shot out of the cavern and away, probably back to his home in the spacial rift.

Medicham broke the solemn silence. "We must return to my team to make the return trip to the guild" he announced, faltering for a moment when he earned another set of glares. He then walked off. Instead, I looked off towards the path Caleb had taken.

_Should I follow him?_

I raised a paw, and instantly earned myself a smack on the head. I turned to see Servine. She looked furious. "You will not be following Caleb tonight" she practically snarled at me "or any night. Caleb will return when… If he decides to. If I have to follow you again, I will be less lenient". She was threatening me?

"Servine…" I began, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand. "It's your fault this happened. Did you see his eyes? He is utterly destroyed, and it's your fault" she told me.

"I'm worried about him! What if he-" I began. "Then be worried back at the guild" Servine commanded "you can do no more here". With that, she walked off. Wigglytuff looked at me. "I'm sure he'll be alright, Sarah" he said "When he wishes to come back, he can use his badge to return". He could. **if **he wanted to.

Wigglytuff left. I waited for Nincada to crawl onto me for a ride, but he began the journey back to where we had first entered alone. Jake gave me a look and followed him. The only person who had not moved was Mightyena.

"Mightyena?" I asked, desperate for somebody to not be mad at me. Wigglytuff even used my name instead of 'friend'. Did the guildmaster even trust me anymore?I certainly would not. Mightyena had to forgive me, right? He had a crush on me, after all.

After a few moments of silence, he scowled. "You asked me to betray Caleb, and I complied" he growled "do you want to know why?". After a few more moments of me not knowing how to answer, his scowl deepened. "I had every intention of stopping you at the last moment. To help Caleb, but as luck would have it, every event led to your ultimate success" he said. He had been about to stop me?

"And what's more" he snarled, now looking me in the eyes "You have betrayed everyone. Everyone, Sarah. I was only the first, as you tried to take advantage of me!". He was seething with rage now. "I cant believe I allowed myself to think that you could possibly be right for me. I hope you enjoyed ruining Caleb's life, Sarah".

With that, he walked off, his footsteps padding away until I was completely alone in the dark. I was stunned. Mightyena had loved me, but I had torn that down with this final act. I had gotten Caleb stuck here, something he would never forgive me for. Mightyena had shaken his crush on me, and the others, even little Nincada, were furious at me. I had betrayed everyone, Caleb the most.

"_I hope you enjoyed ruining Caleb's life, Sarah" _Mightyena had snarled at me. I had not enjoyed it. I had not thought anything through, and when it came down to it, only I was to blame. This truly was my fault, and everyone knew it.

I began to cry silently for a while, standing there. I had torn Caleb's entire life down. I had done it to myself, too, but that was at least tolerable. Once again, I was the girl nobody liked, and this time I only had myself to blame. Why had I fallen in love with Caleb?

_Once again, Caleb could have answered that. Now, he's gone. _

Gone into the night like some ghost pokemon. Gone. Would I ever see him again? Despite everything I had done, and knew I had done, I hoped so. I hoped that I could see him again. My heart raced every time I saw him, after all.

After I cried the rest of my tears away, I ended up walking to join the others. Maybe there was something I could do, that people trusted me to do. Maybe I could slowly regain my life back. Maybe I could someday be with Caleb again, if he ever forgave me. Would a human forgive something like that?

When I got there, the psychic team was gathering energy again. Medicham was explaining something to Nincada, something about how teleportation between two places becomes easier if the same two locations have been connected before, the very time they arrived here for example. Servine greeted her tangela, who had retreated with the psychic team.

I did not care. I just showed up. Mightyena and Servine gave me short glares, just before Medicham announced that they were almost done building the necessary psychic energy to go back to the guild en masse. I barely listened. I just stood where they told me to and waited to suddenly appear at the guild, where people would wonder what in heck we were doing all night as a group, including the guildmaster. I needed to just be done with others for a while.

I would not get any sleep tonight.

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

Yellow light enveloped us as the psychic energy hit the correct amount to get us to the guild. I was glad that it would not take a day and a half like it had taken the others. I glanced in Mightyena's direction before I could not see anything. Forgetting to close my eyes, I was temporarily blinded by the energy. My vision returned after about fifteen seconds had passed.

The guild was dark, just about everyone was asleep. Sleep sounded like a great idea, actually. Wigglytuff looked at us, and said "Go to sleep, friends! Tomorrow, I want you to rest. o jobs tomorrow, alright?" We nodded yes and sleepily departed to where our homes were. Sarah and Nincada walked into the guild dorms, but Mightyena and I had a longer walk ahead of us.

After exiting the guild, we began to walk in the dark. At the crossroads, Mightyena and I would split up. We lived in different locations, anyhow. After a time of walking down the long staircase, Mightyena looked at me and broke the silence. "Do you think Caleb will be alright?" he asked hesitantly. I looked at the stars above, managing not to trip in the process. "I don't know" I responded truthfully "i think he will be in bad shape for quite a while. Whether he ever recovers… I don't know him well enough to tell".

He grimaced. "I don't know him well enough either. Nothing is certain now. In fact, Caleb might just find his way to some other continent where he never has to see us again. Maybe there, he can pretend that he was never human".

"Caleb is no actor" I responded "maybe it would help him to get as far away as physically possible, but he can't go about trying to lie to himself. It just is not him. I have never seen him lie. Ever. If he does leave, then that's his decision".

"neither of us want that to happen. You know that. The only reason we don't follow him is because we respect his decisions. He deserves to make at least this one unobstructed" Mightyena said. His eyes became shadowed, even under the bright moon. "I can't express my anger right now…" he said. I looked at him. "I know" I said.

Upon reaching the crossroads, I said goodbye to Mightyena. As he departed, the tangela caught up to me. Without a word, I began to lead the sleepy pokemon home. Maybe it would get easier to cope. Maybe Caleb would come back. However, I knew in my heart that he might never recover.

_Sleep tight, wherever you are..._

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

The mountains are a cold, hard place at night. I stumbled up one of them. It would be a mistake to say I was thinking at all. My mind was spent on energy. I was really just walking. I may not even remember this trip when I was done with it. Where was I going? I did not care. It just had to not be here.

I was faltering. My strength waning. I had been walking all night. At any point, I could just fall over and sleep. Maybe I could just slow my breathing a bit more than that. Maybe…

My surroundings became slightly warmer, and what was left of my mental state wondered at how it was getting warmer higher up the mountain. Grass was visible. A sweet smell drove me forward. What it was, I did not care. I just had to keep moving. That was all I knew how to do. Keep moving. Keep padding along on accursed paws, keep moving my furry body up this warm mountain.

Grass was becoming plentiful. Many aspects of this place made me feel good. I could perhaps rest here tonight. Perhaps I could sleep. Sleep, the only place where worries did not matter. Except they did. Nothing could prevent me from worrying about my state of mind and my future.

_What future?_

A building that seemed to be made out of a grassy hill appeared. It's entrance was small, too small for me. I staggered on. Finally, an open silo type building appeared with an archway as an entrance. Nobody home. I allowed myself several more seconds to walk through a bunch of flowers and in.

I did not want to wake up for a while. The needs of the body would be replenished eventually. How could I stay asleep, and just be dreaming? One way to stay asleep popped into my mind. after curling up on the ground in the little building, I used the last of my energy to channel ghost type aura into my badge. A dark aura enveloped me, and I fell into a deep, deep sleep.

_I'm coming, Riley, Caleb, Sarah… The only three I can face right now..._

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Nothing woke me up. I had not slept well, and so woke up before the sun was even past sunrise. My dreams had been the same, hopeful stuff, but it carried with it the guilt of a thousand mistakes. My mistakes.

So I had eventually woken up from them. I paced about, worrying about Caleb. Was he safe? Was he all right? Would he be OK? Eventually, I just stopped and laid down again. It was pointless to worry. Caleb could not be in any danger. If I tried to find him Servine and maybe Mightyena would hunt me down and restrain me.

Sleep was not coming back. Nincada was awake too, but he said nothing at all. Wigglytuff had said something about taking the day off. Another day off. Oh well, it was probably because of our life or death situation. If anybody tried to walk in, I would consider torching them. I was feeling slightly bitter.

Nincada disappeared an hour later, probably burrowing somewhere. Talk to people he could talk to without difficulty. People who he could talk to without betraying his feelings of anger. Nincada did not like being angry. Neither did i. Anytime I had been angry, I had forgiven the offender quickly.

What choices had led up to this life? I met Caleb. I fell in love with him. I got him to Wigglytuff's guild, and I coaxed him into creating a rescue team. I fought to convey my love and… What, hope he would show the same back? Being pushy just made him angry over time, though he did his best not to snap at me. How stupid I was, yet I had been acting on love. Was I at fault?

_Yes. _

Yes, I was to blame. Nothing would change about that. I was that one absol who ruined Caleb's life and made an enemy of everyone around her. That would likely be how history remembered me, if I ever made it on the pages of history.

_Hopefully not…_

For now, team edge was me and Nincada. Nincada was angry at me. Could I fix that? Probably not until time had passed. Maybe I could wait. Maybe some time without Caleb would be good for me. Maybe it would help me get over myself a little bit.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

I woke slowly. I had slept well. I had actually slept well.

_It's over…_

The battle was over. I felt no unwarranted anger within me. Any anger I felt was mine, and in my opinion justified. The only anger I felt… Was at Sarah. Could I ever trust her again? It would be difficult. I don't forget easily. I certainly don't forgive without time.

Everything else felt fine. There was no pain. There was no unnatural rage. I was free. Free from everything that had happened to me since I met Caleb. Caleb, who was stuck in this world now. He would fit in better here than he thinks, but I would not be surprised if he avoided all contact with other pokemon for the rest of his life.

My teammates were asleep in the den, as they had been when I had staggered into it last night. They had no idea what I had gone through. I did not really want to tell them. The others did not know that I could see what I was doing while I had been sent into a rampage. Even Caleb did not remember. His choice to stay had not been so much a choice rather than a realization of who he was.

I hated myself for what I had done to the others, even knowing that I was not really at fault. Caleb hated himself because who he is is different than who he wanted to be, and he was someone who could not make himself go home, away from this world. To Caleb, this world was wonderful and terrible at the same time.

I wondered what he was thinking at the moment. Who did he blame for this? Who could he blame? Knowing him, he would blame himself, and maybe Sarah. He knows that our being there made things so difficult, but I imagine that he did not blame us particularly.

Caleb was not one to hate anybody. His hate had only stemmed from seeing someone killed, that i've seen.

_Other than color discrimination. That made him plenty mad. _

He had gotten strangely mad about that, ready to fight me at that point. There had been the time he had pretended to defend Servine during that honestly hilarious situation in waterfall cave. Sarah had been so mortified by the concept that Servine had fallen for Caleb. Caleb had actually laughed when it was over, causing our charged attacks to disappear pathetically in our mouths. I had somehow avoided sneezing a bunch with the resulting smoke.

That had been a good time. Caleb laughing at something tended to mean that it was seriously funny, and laughter from him was always something to bring the entire room's mood up. Everyone wanted to laugh when he did.

I wondered if he would ever laugh again.

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**This chapter was shorter than some others. I wanted it to be longer, but i realized that i was filling up the chapter with stuff that i did not need. So, i deleted some useless filler and just focused on the reactions and results. More on that in future chapters. Enjoy them in the future!**

**I wanted to give you all who read this a big thank you for sticking to the story! I make this story for everyone (including myself of course), and it is personally my favorite one that i have set up. I have others, sure, that i may tell eventually, but this thing has so many books in store for it i may run out of time to do them! My point is that The Absolite Chronicles are here to stay. Maybe it will take more time between updates when i go to college, but that will certainly be after this book and maybe others have been completed. I WILL continue them. **

**Please review my story! I love knowing what i can do to do better at making stories! I love knowing what you guys think! **

**Please send character bios if you have character(s) for me! I love getting those too! I recently received one from Lucas6921a. Thanks a lot! Not spoiling the name. When he shows up, i will be certain to credit you, Lucas6921a.**

**I hope you all enjoyed this Chapter! Thank you all for reading, and have a great day!**

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**Jango: Man, i really had to try not to spoil this chapter at the beginning of this. It was so hard to say 'by the way, Caleb can't make himself leave'. I guess you may have guessed that based on hos you knew this story would continue. Oh well, i managed not to spoil anything!**

**Hyperjade: you are however, now treading a fine line Jango. What if people read the author's notes first, eh?**

**Jango: uh... **

**Hyperjade: you're safe. For now. **

**Jango: Right...**

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	25. Chapter Twenty Five: Back to 'Normal'

**So things have died down a bit... Just a bit though. Things still have to happen. Business as 'usual' in the pokemon world! **

**Don't expect to see any of Caleb's POV for a while. Plenty of shenanigans going on outside of that dream to keep you guys occupied! Things! Excitement! **

**Read on, people! **

**-Jango**

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**Chapter 25: Back To "Normal"**

**⻤Nincada's POV⻤**

I awoke before sunrise again. Today, our 'normal' routine would begin again. Sarah snored away, probably dreaming about Caleb. I still felt angry about what had happened, but I knew that I had to drop it. It was over. I could not dwell on it. Regardless, I felt frustrated.

After about half an hour of just waiting around bored, I realized that there were be questions about where Caleb was. I needed to discuss this with Wigglytuff. I quietly burrowed away from the room. The underground of this part of the guild was very confusing to dig through.

First, because there were paths that magically intercrossed, it was like there were invisible walls within the dirt that I could not dig through. The vibrations I could sense, mostly mine because I was basically the only one awake, were unhelpful. That and Loudred's snoring, which I could hear after a certain turn.

So it took me awhile to get to the man room. I basically burrowed straight into the guildmaster's room. After some hesitation, I surfaced. Wigglytuff was there, but before, he had been asleep with his eyes creepily open. Caleb had gotten wrecked by the guildmaster when he foolishly awoken him. Even Caleb could be comical. Maybe not anymore.

Wigglytuff would likely wake up before everything awoke. I could just wait here, Right? I checked the room. Chatot was dozing, standing on a small wooden bar attached to a pedestal. I could have woken them, but that may be a mistake.

I decided to wait for a while. I could just think things over. Problem was, I arrived at the same conclusion every time. I always thought about the future, and when I got that far, it was always the same. Whether Caleb came back or not, he would likely never be the same ever again.

Several hours passed before the sun began to appear on the horizon. Another hour passed before Chatot awoke, probably to get Wigglytuff up and then Loudred, resulting in the start of the day. Instead, he found me just awkwardly standing there.

"Nincada? What brings you here at this hour?" Chatot asked sleepily. If he had been fully awake, he may have been more demanding. "I must speak with Wigglytuff" I replied, and he narrowed his eyes. "Why?" he demanded, starting to wake up a little.

"It's very important" I said unhelpfully "it's actually a rather sensitive topic…"

His eyes narrowed a bit further. "I see…" he said. I became slightly apprehensive, awaiting dismissal. Finally, he flapped his wings rapidly. "Very well! I shall depart after I wake the guildmaster. I will not be long, so please hurry!". With the utmost care, he took a feather out of a box and tickled under Wigglytuff's nose. With that, he flew to the door and with difficulty, pushed it open. He flew right out.

"Atchoo!" Wigglytuff sneezed, his hyper voice apparently neutralized. "Ah, good morning, Chatot!" he said happily.

"Hi, Wigglytuff" I responded for Chatot. he looked down at me. "Oh, Nincada! You came to visit me!" he said happily, doing a little dance. The whole thing was a bit surreal.

"It's unfortunately a matter of more urgency i'm afraid" I told him, causing him to stop dancing and look down on me. "Oh…" he replied, a little sad. I did not want him to get sad. I bet he has an explosion episode in that scenario as well.

"I realize that there will be questions about Caleb" I began "What will we tell them?". Wigglytuff immediately brightened. "Oh, yes! Do not worry, Friend!" he said, before lumbering over towards the wall, it's shelves littered with things. Wigglytuff looked into a old box and took out a piece of paper, that had been written on recently. "I've got everything under control" he assured me "When they ask, I am going to tell them that Caleb has temporarily gone on a solo mission that may take him some time. Of course, I will have to leave the details out".

"Oh" I said softly "I guess everything was planned out. No need to worry. I guess i'll just take my leave, and-"

"Oh, not yet!" Wigglytuff exclaimed, jumping in front of me and scaring me half to death. "You still look troubled. What's the matter, friend?" he asked. I took a breath. "I fear he may not come back at all" I confessed. Wigglytuff looked to not comprehend what I was saying. "Not come back. Leave forever" I clarified "i fear he won't return".

His ears drooped a bit, his eyes showing some sadness. "Oh… Well, we can only hope!" he said, jumping up, eradicating all sadness in himself. "If he does not show for a while, we can always send out a request for someone to report his whereabouts if they see him". That was actually a fantastic idea. Give Caleb some time, and then find out where he is.

"Thank you, Wigglytuff" I said, some happiness restored. Not completely however. Anger still lurked there. It was no unnatural anger, I knew. it would fade someday. Mentally, I wished Caleb the best of luck.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

"UP AND AT 'EM! IT'S MORNING!"

"Urgh…" I muttered, and waited for Nincada to push me out of bed. I had no intention of getting up until that happened. Nincada did not come along. Maybe he was tired of that. maybe I was about to take a blow as Loudred would come in for round two. After groaning again, I forced myself up. I had not slept too well.

Nincada was not in the room. I guess he had burrowed away or something. Maybe he was taking a walk. Maybe he was just at the main hall. I decided that for better or for worse, I could only find out. Find out I did. After walking the straight path to the main hall, I saw him in his place. Loudred was looking about, probably for Caleb. What would we tell the others?

Wigglytuff showed up and by Chatot's command, we rattled off the first three rules of the guild. My voice sounded shaky to me, anyways. Afterwards, most of the guild was looking for Caleb now. How would I react when they asked about him? Would I break down? Maybe. I had become such an emotional wreck. It had happened like this the first time I had heard a dying heartbeat, and I had lost Caleb as well. Maybe not physically, but certainly psychologically. I had no idea what that word even meant. Caleb had just used it while talking about the mind. I guess it had something to do with the mind.

"Ahem!" Chatot said "before we jump to work today, there is an announcement to make. You may have noticed the absence of team edge's leader". We all waited, while I realized that Chatot was either about to tell the story, or pull something out of nowhere. He took a piece of paper he had and unfolded it. He began to read, glancing at Wigglytuff, and then began again.

"Caleb has accepted a solo mission and may be gone for several days, if not more than a week" he read "His whereabouts are currently and may stay unknown for quite some time". he put the paper down, giving Wigglytuff another look. Then, he flapped his wings to grab the attention of all pokemon looking at me.

"Now, Pokemon!" he chirped "Let's get to work!"

"HOORAY!" the guild cheered. All questions had been answered. It had been garbage, lies, but it made sense to tell. Nincada was nodding.

"Was that you?" I asked. He nodded without looking. That was where he had been this morning, talking to Wigglytuff. Not Chatot of course, Chatot had begun to glance at the guildmaster.

So today was supposed to be 'normal'. No such thing without Caleb around. We were used to him. When we arrived at the 'normal' job board, Jake was there. I did not want him to see me. Swampert did, however, and gestured for me to come over. I wanted to refuse, but I don't know how much he knew.

"Hello, Sarah" he greeted me. I nodded, almost failing to say "Morning". His head tilted a bit as he studied my attitude. He nodded and looked back at Jake, who was ignoring me, pulling down outlaw job after outlaw job. Today's dungeon to be completely cleansed of outlaws would be the new 'Chargestone Cave'. I guess Caleb just shows up everywhere doesn't he? Finding a few new dungeons had seemed awesome before.

I searched the board with my eyes. Another new dungeon name was there, called 'Lightning core'. I guess that was the one where everybody was invisible to everyone else. The outlaw job was very highly ranked, at eight stars. I guess if the outlaws are invisible…

I walked away from that board. I intended to get a job that did not involve fighting. So I came to the other board, where Caleb had been smacked across the room when Dugtrio had updated it. It had been extremely comical, but again, it was a sign that Caleb had gotten involved in everything around here.

I looked at these jobs instead. Somebody had somehow **already **gotten lost in chargestone cave, though it was discovered so little time ago. That mission seemed doable, but Caleb had almost been turned two-dimensional by some of those electrified boulders. Another 'Lightning Core" job that was six stars.

Instead, I tried to look somewhere that did not remind me of Caleb. Where to? Nincada pointed out several, but I was not really in the mood to go anywhere that would remind me of Caleb. So, I took a job in somewhere called tiny meadow. Nincada looked at it and nodded. Did he understand? Did he know why I chose this?

We departed to the new place with little resistance.

**⌁ Jake's POV ⌁**

"This isn't like you" my partner rumbled behind me. I nodded sadly as I pulled one last chargestone cave outlaw off the board. That made eleven. One less than our record, twelve outlaws in the mystifying forest. It would be a profitable day. "I know…" I whispered.

Swampert deserved more than that, more than the lack of information I was giving him. "We showed up where Caleb was going to leave. Because Sarah had chased him, we followed. He could not leave, Swampert. It's not just Sarah's fault. It's all of ours really. Sarah alone may not have been enough to stop him. I know I need to treat Sarah better, but for now I need to be frustrated. Just for a while.

Swampert's sympathetic gaze bore on me. "Sure" he rumbled "Just get your anger out on these outlaws, yeah?". I smiled at my partners ever present ability to make me feel better. "Yeah" I said "Let's take down some outlaws".

Swampert and I set out for chargestone cavern.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

Being a guild rookie had been so much tougher in the mornings than now. My sensitive ears had made me so vulnerable to Loudred's voice. Every morning was a nightmare. Literally, I still have the occasional nightmare about waking up to that. lately, I have been nightmare free. I had been saved.

So when I was interrupted in my very peaceful sleep by a certain bastiodon, I grumbled and just turned over. After a few unsuccessful tried to get me on my way, Bastiodon decided to do what I had taught him to do if we were late: Stomp on my chest with his incredibly heavy foot.

That would get me up quick if I had slept in. Yelping, I scrambled to my paws. After checking that my side had not been smashed too badly, I nodded at Bastiodon, fully awake now. "Thanks" I said. He nodded slowly. The water lights were glowing faintly. Machoke was getting our pack together, ready for the day.

"Do we have our mission?" I asked, ready to get back to a 'normal' day. Nothing would ever feel normal again, but I could pretend. I could pretend nothing was wrong.

"Yes" he intoned, and Machoke came up to me with a paper in his hand. It was a simple job in the apple woods. "Right then" I said "Are you two ready?"

They nodded. I noticed that they still don't talk much around me. I guess I was a little overbearing before I met Caleb and Sarah. Gee, Caleb was just about everywhere, was he not?

He had made such an impact on everything. He may still be here, but would he change? He had told me everyone was capable of change. Could he? I thought about the circumstances. Would Caleb become vengeful, or angry? Or would he become more sorrowful in general? How could I know? A human mind would be so much different than a pokemon's. Caleb had even been fighting his own new instincts what seemed like so long ago.

Maybe even Caleb could change. He had actually cried when he could not make himself leave. He had looked totally destroyed. What could become of him now?

Machoke and Bastiodon started to leave, seeing me not moving so quickly. I decided to catch up to them. Upon doing so, I realized how bright the sunlight looked. I guess I get used to the light slowly getting brighter when you lose sleep. Getting out of the cave was easy, comprehending the construction around us was not.

Buildings were popping up left and right. I saw several were made of wood, looking very sturdy for being thrown together overnight. Some others were more intricate looking, and built entirely of… Dirt. it was like the earth had risen up specifically to take the form of an incredible mansion, which had members from several guilds in it. I never knew how those things got built, I only know that two home builders that could do this were competing in the tournament as well.

Apple woods was not far away, but I wanted time to relax tonight. So, I nodded to my team and we began our journey to the forest dominated by apple trees.

On the way towards the main road, we had to avoid a gossipy group of bug types. A butterfree, a beedrill, a dustox and a venomoth spoke quickly and annoyingly to each other, their wings (besides the beedrill) releasing tons of different spores into the air. We skirted around them, my ears picking up their conversation.

"Oh, when King and Queen got that house over there up within minutes, everyone was just staring like idiots! I mean, haven't they ever seen an earth power before?"

"Totally! When that silly rattata got in the way and they did not notice-"

"He flew! Straight into the sky! That staraptor rescuer had to catch him!"

"Or that Gurdurr, was he not the one that got those other houses built over night too? It took so much longer, but he managed it!"

"He had the help of the timburr, right?"

"Yeah, but those goofballs didn't do that much work at all!"

"Totally, and when it was finished, the gurdurr was rather displeased with them, having only been able to build two small buildings! He scared them by slamming his girder into the ground! They won't laze around tomorrow, that's for sure!"

And on it went. Apparently the nicknames of the new builders were 'Queen' and 'King'. Interesting. I wondered what fighting them would be like.

_Earth power, huh? Several pokemon knowing that move are here I guess, judging by the massive amount of new dirt houses. _

Some of the dirt houses were less intricate than the one right in front of our house, signifying several different builders using earth power. I mean, the one in front of our house was a freaking mansion, with impressive upper levels and even balconies. Balconies made of dirt, somehow staying intact.

That aside, I almost walked straight into a nidorina. I avoided that one, hoping not to get poisoned. Bastiodon noticed my lack of focus, and stamped a foot down to snap me to attention. Machoke was startled, having not been paying attention either.

The rest of the way out of the town was rather uneventful.

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

My tangela had to wake me up today. Eventually, they just pulled me out of bed. As my eyes fluttered opened, they held a piece of paper for a job within the apple woods dungeon. A good place to try and think of things normally, when many other places have involved Caleb somehow.

I looked about at my home. We had hollowed out a previously completely impassable bush in a grove of trees. The place had become like a cavern of sorts, though the roof left quite a bit of space for sunlight to leak through. It was well lit. It looked very nice. It was slightly difficult for any not grass types to enter. Glad all of us were grass types.

"Do you want to go now?" the two of them asked. I looked at them in slight surprise.

_Oh, yeah. They're used to me being in a rush. _

"Let's take our time" I said, and they practically jumped back "apple wood's is not that far. You two ready?" They just stared at me for about twenty seconds, clearly wondering either if they were dreaming or if I had gone mad. "eh, yes, we are…" they said. Their vines darted about as they waited for me to shoulder my bag and check our belongings.

"And we're off!" I said cheerfully, mostly to confuse them. It was actually rather funny to play jokes like this. I walked out of the vine grotto, pushing aside the dozens of different plants around me with a little difficulty. After I had gotten out, I looked back at the entrance. There was no evidence that there was any home there. Nobody knew where team ivy lived.

"Interesting timing" a familiar voice said, making me jump three feet straight up, create a leaf blade, and try to stab whoever had decided to just **be **there. My blade glanced off of something, and I realized I had just stabbed an explorer badge.

"Oh, Mightyena!" I sighed "You are just so silent…"

"Sometimes" he admitted, viewing his badge, noting the lack of damage. Those things were tougher than pokemon were, after all. I realized he now knew where I lived. "Well, congratulations on learning where I live" I congratulated him.

Suddenly, the dark type looked somewhat uncomfortable. "Actually, I kind of… already knew" he muttered. "Hang on, what?" I asked "were you-"

"I am no stalker" he interrupted "your scent is strong around this place. You clearly spend a lot of time here".

_Oh, right. Mightyena. Species: mightyena. Nose capabilities: mightyena. _

"Got it" I said, slightly blushing at my failure to think things through. That seemed to be a recurring problem since I met… Caleb.

_Can I stop thinking about what happened now?_

My frown caught Mightyena's attention. He frowned too. "Yeah" he said. That was all he said. He understood perfectly. Suddenly, my tangela teammates showed up, glancing at Mightyena comprehensively. With a vine, I reached behind me and snatched the job description from where the tangela had been holding it. I read it again.

Another seedot somehow having found his way into a completely different forest, sending out the distress call. Mightyena came around to see it. "Really?" he asked, and then said "our job's in apple woods, too".

_Huh…_

Machoke ran into view, breathing a bit heavily. Machokes were no speedsters. They had some impressive physical strength, but that's about it. "May I see the job description?" Mightyena asked. Since when does he ask for things? Machoke blinked, pulling out the rolled up piece of paper. I looked at that one, seeing that it was a close floor to our finishing floor. It was about taking out an outlaw two floors after that.

Something clicked in my mind. "Well" I ventured "we might as well go as a large team". My teammates backed up a few steps. "Great idea" Mightyena said, and **his **team backed up several steps, Bastiodon having just pounded into view.

"Huh!?" all four of our teammates asked in unison. I guess they just did not get that things had changed. The tangela were afraid of Mightyena, Bastiodon and Machoke thought I was still going to rush about. I was not. Well, Mightyena's battle style could still scare off some pokemon quite easily, but he was not a bad guy anymore.

"Settled" Mightyena said simply, taking the page from me carefully, and tossed it back to Machoke. He blinked again, before rolling up the job and put it away slowly. I did likewise, rolling up my own job and put it away. The tangela exchanged a glance, and Bastiodon just seemed to accept it. Machoke was looking between the two of us, unsure of what to say.

Instead, Mightyena and I started off towards the apple woods, and our teammates had no choice but to follow. This would be a great chance to mess with them. Why was I so keen on that all of a sudden? I guess I was just a bit looser nowadays.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

The trip to the tiny meadow was short, short enough to be within walking distance. "Here already?" I asked, noting that we were in front of a, well, a tiny meadow.

"Yep" Nincada said simply, looking at the map "Says here it is a mystery dungeon, but it does not actually contain a maze. Enemies just show up when we enter, and we just have to figure out what to do when we go in. No puzzles. Nothing. This will be the easiest job ever" he finished.

After we walked in, the grass seemed to get a few inches longer within seconds, though it was still barely up to my knees. Nincada decided to give me a mission briefing. "We want to find an item somebody dropped here" he informed me "Apparently called a light star".

"What in heck's a light star?" I asked, thinking about the few star shaped things I have seen lately. There was the thing Servine had found, but otherwise… That was about it.

"Apparently, it's nothing special unless others are nearby. Each one glows if another is nearby, and the more there are, the brighter each glows. Apparently, finding enough can create a fantastic glow that can be seen just about anywhere".

Huh. Interesting. I was about to open my mouth to answer, but Nincada was not done. "I think they will be used to keep the arena lit during that tournament that seems to have something to do with more things than Caleb does at this point…"

That was rather insensitive of him… In fact, a tear escaped me at that point. Another reminder that Caleb was still around, that I had ruined everything, that I had basically ruined Caleb's life. Again.

"Oh, dear…" Nincada muttered "i'm sorry, Sarah". I sniffed in response. I was just so ridiculously emotional. It was sickening, but I could do nothing about it. I just had to keep going. Why was I so emotional all the time? I did not even know. Maybe it was all the hate before I met Caleb…

I shook my head. I needed to get a hold of myself. "Let's just find that light star" I practically growl. I can't properly growl with my strange higher pitched voice anyways, so all I manage is a feminine groan. Even other female absol have a deeper pitched voice! Maybe their voices are higher pitched than a male absol, but come on. This is ridiculous.

I took a moment while I walked to reflect on how ridiculously unlucky I was. First, I was freaking **red**. What has that color ever gotten me besides weird looks and basic discrimination? Then, my voice was high pitched, and anybody feeling generous enough to ignore my super obvious color would recoil at my surprisingly high pitched voice. maybe it was more reminiscent of a typical female voice, but…

Then there was my freaky ability to do more damage with a flamethrower than my physical body. My strength was as pitiful as the average absol's special capabilities. Why was I switched as well? Why would it be that way?

Because of all of these things, Caleb had really been the only person to truly treat me like he would treat anyone else. I had loved him for that. I **do **love him for that, but how could he ever love me? The selfish, emotional red absol that ruined his life.

Now more tears escaped me. I could not control them. I had to forget him completely. I had to have someone erase my memories of him or something, just to make it easier, but I am a dark type. It will never be that easy for me. Because of my typing, my memory stays where it is.

Nincada jumped off of me and burrowed under the grass. I guess he was tired of my crying, or maybe he had found something. Either way, I was now even more alone. I tried to focus, but that was not happening. My mind just kept returning to how much of a failure I was.

Maybe he would forgive me. I reasoned that Caleb was always so calm and stoic, but inside he was a very good person. He might forgive me. I knew he could. Why did I worry about that?

_I'm not. It's guilt. _

Guilt. Something I had not felt about Caleb since I had met him. Until I had gone too far, tried too hard. My mental image of him still sped up my heartbeat, but along with it was the shame of my actions.

Finally, finally something distracted me. Some pokemon from the dungeon just showed up in front of me. Something to take my anger on. a group of skiploom and two breloom.

_Grass types. _

One widespread flamethrower later, the only enemies standing were the breloom, who decided to charge me. another flamethrower took care of them. I viewed the resulting damage. The grass was destroyed, but as I watched, it grew back really fast, visibly. I guess that was how this dungeon worked. To test it, I dragged my claw through the earth, creating three lines in the dirt. As I watched, the dirt moved back to where it was over time, and the ripped out grass regrew. This place was basically indestructible.

Occupied, I decided to move on and find the stupid light star. It was my job, after all. It should be easy. Walk through this somewhat hilly, grassy field until I saw a star shaped item, right?

I walked along. The hill suddenly seemed endless, and I guess it may be with the dungeon's weird shape. I tried to see a staircase, but it was either behind a hill, or it was a massive distance away. The job had not specified a floor.

Maybe it was just one floor. Maybe it would be easier to just run about like a spaz until I found it. As I began to, random pokemon just popped out of nowhere, Staravia racing out of the sky, skiploom floating about, breloom annoyingly getting rather close before they are defeated. If I got hit by a mach punch… That would not be fun. Fighting types are super effective to our type. I don't really know how that works, but somebody punching me in the face using fighting type energy hurts **really **bad.

so I avoided letting any breloom get close to me. I would rather have the skiploom mob me than taking even one punch from a fighting type. I remember getting nailed by a mach punch when I asked a fighting type to help train, because the residents who knew me really did not want to be anywhere near my flames.

So he pounded me into the ground. Literally, there was a crater afterwards. I did not learn too much about how to use my moves properly. When I had awoken, the guy was just training like normal, I had not even been moved. I guess he had known that it would go this way. It was obvious I was inexperienced.

The problem was, I just fought by blasting everything away with sheer force. No skill involved. If somebody comes at me with a respectable strategy I was done. Flamethrower was powerful, and so was water pulse. Razor wind messed things up…

_Oh, yeah, and I forget attacks I can use. Protect. Razor wind. Things I can use properly and forget to. _

I needed to stop forgetting about that. I needed to use it more often. That's right, if a breloom gets too close, I can protect myself. So I decided to try out my attacks on the next breloom who came along.

So when one did, I decided to cause quite a ruckus in their ranks. Three of them charged me, and discovered that my razor wind was so much stronger than an average absols, because of my odd strengths. While very strong absols can whip up a few small tornadoes, my attack becomes a sphere of wind around me, blocking basically anything. Why would I ever use protect when the brelooms' fists barely got into the sphere without being flung away? Why would I use water pulse when my projectile razor wind wrecked things?

_A: Water pulse is a water type attack. B: Razor wind takes a ridiculous amount of time to charge. _

I was just glad that mystery dungeon pokemon don't know how to run when they need to. So they just bounded at my sphere of wind until I was ready. The very force of my wind made surrounding grass and dirt fly around me, effectively cutting off my vision, but when I remembered to use my absol sense, I could see the enemy. I was actually floating in the air by the sheer force of the wind.

With a pathetic attempt at a roar (My voice is still high pitched), The wind condensed into my horn in an instant, and I let my attack fly.

**BOWWWWWWWWWW…..**

The attack's sound effect more than made up for my pathetic try at roaring, and it's power was improved from the last time I had used it. The last time I had, Rayquaza had winced. Now it was more powerful. I guess I have leveled a bit over time. The breloom were blasted away, and pushed into the dirt. A massive explosion ensued, almost knocking me away as well. The dust took a while to settle, and when it did, I saw a pretty big crater where the breloom had been. They were at the bottom of it.

I looked at them. The whites of their eyes showed, and they were definitely unconscious. Each had a deep cut on them, maybe an inch deep, from my attack before the sheer force of it had followed. They were bleeding, even, though not too badly. I would refrain from using this on weaker pokemon. I could seriously injure somebody if that happened, though no wound should be fatal. The only fatal wounds I had seen was with the fight against the darkness.

We had all survived that. These fighting types would survive a little blood loss at the hands of my razor wind. I realized that I was not so disgusted by blood. I guess after having almost bled out, blood does not scare you as much.

Again, I noted how the terrain was fixing itself. The dirt blasted away from my attack sifted across the ground pouring back into the pit. Thankfully, the breloom were being supported by it, not buried. When these guys awoke, hopefully they should no longer be in a daze, and can leave the dungeon if they can.

I felt it again: the feeling of power racing through me, of my weariness disappearing. Another level up for me. I wondered what level of power I was actually at. Did it matter? Probably not.

I began to race my way along this place, looking about for a super obvious item lying in the grass. After crossing a hill, I saw more skiploom, and they were moving in the opposite direction of me. I realized they were heading for a small pokemon in the grass. Nincada.

Figuring I should not take chances with the whole 'nontraitor' thing, I decided to race into battle without just bathing the grass types with fire. Instead, I would wait until Nincada was not in my line of sight.

Nincada showed me up, however, holding his own against the grass types rather than having to run from them. I slowed to a stop watching him use x-scissor repeatedly and dealing quite a bit of damage with each attack. he must have used swords dance or something.

After a bit, all of the skiploom had been taken down. Nincada looked about and saw me. "Oh, hello, Sarah" he said almost cheerfully. I guess he was relieving some of his anger by taking down the multitude of enemies around. Perhaps that was why he was so cheerful. "Having fun?" I asked, causing him to shift from side to side a bit. "Uh, yes, I guess" he muttered.

"Well, let's get moving" I told him, all business now "We'd better find that light star".

Nincada hesitated before climbing onto my back. I guess he's still somewhat mad at me. And why not? I am too. Both of us tried to put that anger aside as we continued to travel through this strange dungeon.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

Apple woods. Home to several pokemon, including several bug types and grass types. Most troublesome was the beedrill on one floor, floor eight. Those things are actually pretty tough, and their bug type attacks really mess me up, and probably Servine's entire team. This place would actually be rather tough.

How the type thing worked was beyond me. It was probably beyond even Caleb, thinking about it. Not much was known about it, or how little sense it made. All I knew was that if I got wrapped in a string shot, it burned like a fire type move. Super effective attacks really mess me up. I think grass types actually have an easier time dealing with bug types than we dark types do.

_Anyways…_

The first floor of the dungeon appeared as we entered the forest. Don't ask me why a forest dungeon has multiple floors. I don't know either. Instead of thinking about that, I tried to recall what floors we needed. Servine's seedot client was stuck on the fifth floor, and then my outlaw target was on the seventh floor. A snubbull. We were actually rather lucky that our jobs were in some of the earlier floors.

A dozen caterpie charged around the corner. Oh yeah, that's a thing. Bug types tend to swarm. Servine's techniques had changed. Instead of doing her vine web thing, she was now using the leaf blade and her strange ball and chain. That weapon just looked slightly evil to me, particularly compared to the sword. The thin and light blade had a rather regal hilt, and she used it very differently. The ball and chain was just brutal.

Either way, she leapt forward and sent a dozen stabs into the crowd before whirling and smacking the small bug types all to the side. Honestly, her new style of fighting was a little intimidating. I was supposed to be the intimidating one. That was why I leapt straight into battle next time.

When a horde of butterfree's flew into view, I immediately dodged a string shot and darted around the bugs. A few quick shadow balls into the center of their group, and they were down for the count. Now it was Servine's turn to look apprehensive. We scared each other, and I thought about what would happen if we actually fought each other in the tournament. Honestly, I hoped at least one of us would get messed up before that happened.

Even as I worried about which of us would win a fight, I realized that Bastiodon would kind of carry us through a lot of fights. The tangela could not handle a flash cannon. Servine probably could not either. I certainly could not take one myself. Bastiodon was the strongest of all of us.

_How did I end up being the leader in the first place?_

I think it was that I had invited my teammates into the team, when they were a machop and shieldon, and I had been a poochyena. Sometime after evolution, I had become rather worse. I had become much meaner after evolution. Now I wondered: Did my evolution into a mightyena actually cause me to be more aggressive? I did not know. How would i? Maybe I could ask Caleb…

_Except I can't. Maybe if he shows up…_

Now I had made myself angry again. I tried not to show it. Being angry would do nobody any good. I had to remain calm for the good of the group. I had to get myself set up for success here instead of preparing for the future. How useful was the future when the present had bug types trying to mess you up?

I heard an explosion, and turned to see several bog types smoking on the ground. Bastiodon was facing them. "Good work" I said, getting a look around the room. There was a few apples strewn about, as there were always a few of those in every room. Either way, we picked them up. We may have to have some food later.

"Thanks" Bastiodon intoned, checking on the wall of trees that made an impassable wall of the maze. He punched it with a heavy foot, and made several large apples fall to be caught by Machoke and the tangela. We put those away as well.

After going on for a while, we began to be bored of fighting. It was rather easy to knock these pokemon out, and if we avoided the first attack by them we were fine. If not, we would stay up. Bastiodon got hit by a string shot, but it really did not affect him much. He just walked around it. None of the bug types knew silverwind, luckily.

I wondered what we were doing thinking things were not going to change.

**⻤Nincada's POV⻤**

Sarah darted around the fields, looking about for a random object lying around. This dungeon was odd, not having any mazes or anything like that. Once you got in, the field grew in size, being excessively large and very boring.

Sarah was changing direction randomly, probably because we did not know how big this place was. We might never find it if we went too far. I kept a check on our general direction, talking to Sarah when she started to be where she has already gone.

Eventually, we came to a dip in the land we had not seen before. Upon reaching it, it looked like there was an object in it. Clever hiding spot. With the terrain being so uniform, you would not recognize that anything was out of the ordinary if you did not run straight over it.

"That's not a star" Sarah said. I wanted to say 'uh, duh', but I would not do so. Instead, it looked like a chest. A actual treasure chest.

We climbed down and looked at it. It was almost half of Sarah's size. it had an intricate lock on it. "No key, no entry" I said. Sarah frowned. "We'll see about that" she muttered, before trying to stick her claw into the lock. That was not going to work. "Sarah, you will need a key" I informed her. She was trying to twist her claw in the lock. "I've got this…" she muttered. Was she going crazy? I know that I had made her cry by accident before, but was she completely mad at this point?

_She has been almost as destroyed as Caleb when all was said and done. She knows what was wrong, and she hates herself. _

I wondered if she would be all right. Maybe she could recover, and maybe Caleb would as well, but she probably knew now that Caleb would never love her back.

**Click…**

_What!? You're kidding me! _

"Got it!" Sarah said cheerfully, pulling her claw out of the lock and starting to try and open it. "Urf…" she grunted "This lid is heavy…" It was completely impossible that that had worked, yet she somehow had gotten it.

"Aren't absols strong?" I asked Sarah, before remembering that Sarah is more oriented to special attacks. She gave me a cross look, turning her head to view me through the corners of her eyes. "Sorry…" I muttered. She looked at the thing, and then back at me.

"Help me get this up" she said. I moved onto her head and tried to lift the lid, pushing Sarah's head down in the process. "Hey…" she muttered. I grimaced. I was just not thinking properly today. I jumped off, and tried to push it up. My swords dance had worn off earlier. I would have to do it again.

I stepped back and summoned the illusionary swords, causing Sarah to back up. After the move was completed, I began to push again. I got a few inches. "Help me, Sarah!" I muttered, causing her to jolt and then rush forward. Even using swords dance, my physical strength was not too enough to pick up the heavy lid. Sarah grabbed the lid with her teeth. Together, we hauled it over. In the effort, I fell straight in.

Light filled my vision. I was instantly blinded. The light persisted, and I just had to get out of there. I tried to scramble out, but I missed the edge. I could not see at all. "Hang on, Nincada!" Sarah cried out, apparently having scrambled back with the bright light. I felt teeth grab my claw, piercing my skin. I gave a small yelp as Sarah ripped me out of the chest. She did not put me down as we scrambled away.

After she ran for a bit, Sarah tripped or something. We rolled into the grass as I opened my eyes. I was on my back in the grass, so I could not see anything. It was still super bright. Sarah got up in front of me, her red body super obvious in all of this green.

Getting up was difficult, because being on my back makes it difficult to get my legs to the ground. Sarah had to flip me. After doing so, She looked towards the chest, causing me to do so as well. It was open, and it was shining brilliantly. A beam of light erupted from it, reaching high into the sky. It was nearly blinding, and I was still blinking spots out of my eyes.

"What in heck is that!?"

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

The third floor of apple woods seemed to be devoid of swarms of bug types. Every dungeon has one or two floors were you just don't seem to find any enemies. It was a great place to have lunch.

"A picnic in the middle of a dungeon" Mightyena said, some actual cheer in his voice "You **are** crazy". He then took a bite of a large apple at his feet.

"And yet" I said "you are joining us without complaint" I said with a smile on my face. He smirked, swallowing his bite. "Granted" he said, then checking on his teammates. "You two alright?" he asked. Bastiodon looked up slowly from his feast, while Machoke continued to enjoy his apple. He blinked. It was clear that Mightyena was trying to improve relations with his team. They were just surprised every time.

The tangela were feasting on apples, drawing them into their mess of vines and consuming them. I had no idea how they actually ate. Nobody has ever seen their mouths.

"I suppose that this is enjoyable…" Bastiodon intoned slowly, awkwardly. Mightyena and I laughed at that, just freaking out the teams completely. They thought the both of us had gone mad. I was actually having fun.

"So" I began, watching in my peripheral vision as my teammates prepared for me to say something even more insane. They would not be surprised. "I say, because this job will leave plenty of time tonight, that we visit Spinda's cafe!"

Mightyena bore the barest smirk due to the joke we were playing on the teammates. They, by the way, were staring at me uncomprehendingly. Mightyena looked right at me. "Great idea" he said, making everyone jump a bit at the sudden development. "You've actually been there?" I asked.

"Has anybody not?" he asked. I shook my head no. Everybody had been there. It was topic No. 2, right after the upcoming tournament. Speaking of…

"The earth power users are quite busy today" I commented, and he nodded and said "Mansion appeared on our doorstep today". I leaned forward. "You're kidding" I said. A mansion? Really?

He nodded again. "Overheard some gossipy bugs talking about two pokemon who did it. Called 'Queen' and 'King' apparently". "Huh" I responded "They'll probably be in the tournament too. It's really a mansion?"

"Yeah, and detailed enough to be an actual home. Just made of dirt" he responded. I blinked. "Such detail from an earth power user? Impressive. Two of them you say? I wonder what they're capable of…"

"We'll find out on about four weeks. Less than that, actually" Mightyena said, correcting himself "It's slightly difficult to believe that it's actually so close, considering recent events. Caleb's timing is impeccable".

Mentioning him was a mistake. I leaned back in my sitting position, my mind suddenly racing. Mightyena cringed. "Cripes… I'm sorry" he apologized "I know it's a sore topic…". He realized he was making things so much worse. "Spinda's cafe" he muttered, lowering his head "got it.."

our teammates seemed to notice the sudden change in mood, and that things were going south. They said nothing, probably knowing that there was no words to make something like this better. It was destructive, that's for sure. Every conversation turned to Caleb. Why did he have to get involved in just about everything?

I tried to change the subject. I really tried, but there was little to actually talk about. Discovery near the corner of apple woods, dark floating pillar? Caleb found it first. New dungeons? Caleb discovered them with is. Tournament? Now Caleb would likely be a part of it. Strength? Who can win a battle? That conversation would turn to Caleb as well.

"You mentioned the gossiping bug types" I started halfheartedly. He nodded. "Four of them, spreading powder everywhere?" I asked. He nodded again.

I tried to recall the group. The butterfree, I had not seen it before, and it had an explorer's badge. "I think that was actually a team" I told him, and his eyes widened a bit. He said nothing. "We don't want to fight them in the tournament" I went on "an actual explorer team of bug types, they would likely all know silverwind… Probably some other attacks as well. The last time I fought a powerful butterfree, it used psychic on me…"

He cocked his head to the side a bit "What does getting hit by a psychic attack feel like?" he asked. I thought about it. Different pokemon used it differently. "Lots of pokemon use it to throw enemies around or smash them into walls or the ground. The butterfree, it did something a little different. I remember feeling like my body was being stretched, and then compressed, and then it basically felt like I was getting ripped apart from the inside…"

"Huh…" he said "That sounds… Painful". He had never been and never would be hit by a psychic attack. Lucky dark type. "yeah" I said "You don't have to worry about that at all". He looked away. "mmm…" he said he looked uncomfortable. Was he worried about offending me? I guess he was super concerned about offending anyone, considering his past self. He wanted others to understand he had changed.

Our teammates were starting to get it, however. I was glad they were. Mightyena was much better than he used to be. He was not as reckless either. He would be a dangerous enemy in the upcoming tournament. It would be a close fight between our teams.

_And then I see Bastiodon… _

Bastiodon would probably blast us apart pretty quickly. Even if I managed to dodge the flash cannons, my tangela could not do so. It would be me against three powerful pokemon. I could take Machoke. Maybe Mightyena. Not Bastiodon.

Mightyena's team would win the battle. What I wanted to know was whether I could beat Mightyena in a one on one. Would I win, or would Mightyena? Mightyena has seen my leaf weapons, I have not seen his secret techniques. I knew he must have something new prepared for the battle. Everybody was trying to find something to fool the competition.

"We'd best go" Mightyena said, having waited five minutes after everybody was done eating "don't want to be late". Most of us nodded, and all of us stood up, ready to go. So we continued through the dungeon. Floor five was fast approaching. We would find the seedot, travel to floor seven, and take down the obnoxious snubbull.

It would be a walk in the… Forest

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

I squinted to avoid the horrible glare from the chest. It was glowing brilliantly. A beam of light erupted from the top, spearing the sky in a dazzling (and blinding) display of fantastic brilliance.

_Just the poet in me…_

"Do you want to know what that is, or should we just leave it?" I asked. Nincada was looking the other way, his sensitive eyes hurt by the light. "I want to leave it, but we really should not. They could be valuable. We'd best find out what it is at least. I felt like I had landed on a pile of objects" Nincada said.

He was favoring the leg I had grabbed with my teeth. I winced. "Sorry about that by the way" I apologize. He just nodded. I decided to brave the chest. Eyes closed, I approached the chest. The light shone straight through my eyelids. I knew heal pulse now, but heal pulse does not work on the person using it. Recover was the move to do that.

It was still blinding, but I stuck my head inside the chest and felt around. My eyes closed, it was tough, but my teeth closed on something hard. I yanked it out and turned around, realizing that the light was still in my eyes. Not daring to open my eyes, I moved away from the thing and walked a ways. The light began to lessen, so I dashed forward even more. When it was at least bearable with my eyes closed, I dropped it and backed away.

I attempted to open my eyes. It was still bright, but it was shining less than before. It was shining very brightly, and very much in my eyes. I closed them again, deciding to use my absol sense to try and find my way around. My strength was certainly not in mental mapping, but I could do it. Nincada moved towards me. "Less bright…" he muttered.

In my absol sense, it was strange. it was a six pointed star, shining brightly. It's crystal-like shape made it look rather impressive. It's points were rounded, however. That was why Nincada had not been too badly hurt by them when he had fallen into them.

_Wait a second…_

"Nincada…" I began. "Yes?" he asked, turning his head towards me. "This is a shining, star shaped crystal, that grew less bright when I took it away from the others".

"No way…" Nincada breathed. Then, he seemed to grow irritable. He tapped his claw against the ground repeatedly. "I'm willing to give you the BS lockpicking. I am not willing to believe that we would find a chest full of what we need, just dozens of them in a chest. I won't believe it" he ranted. My lockpicking skills were 'BS'? Fine. I guess it should not have worked, but I was proud of that, dang it.

"Suit yourself" I said, and walked forward again. I picked up the light star, placing it in the magic bag I carried, extinguishing the light it sent out. I went to go get the other ones. Boy were we lucky. I guess we should find the one that was actually lost, but we could take these. I was going until something else showed up in my range of sense.

A breloom. I swirled around, attempting to set it aflame, but I was hit by that awful mach punch. My eyes flew open despite my will as I was flung straight into the chest face first.

"**Aaagh!**" I screamed as my vision was filled with the relentless white light, and then darkness swallowed my vision. Somehow I had not been knocked out in one hit, but my eyes were open, and I **couldn't see**.

I had gone blind in an instant.

**Θ Omniscient POV Θ**

"Who is he?"

A group of pokemon circled around a small building. They stared at another pokemon who slept within. A ghostly aura swirled around him. Several of the small pokemon were rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Having gotten a late start, they were trying to figure out what to do with him.

"Maybe we should wake him up?" one of the pokemon in back of the crowd asked. Others voiced their opinions, but one rang above all the others. "You can't".

Most of the pokemon turned towards the new voice. A familiar voice. "Oh! Sage!" they cried out, rushing to greet the visitor. The new arrival greeted them accordingly, before walking to view the sleeping pokemon. "This pokemon is using a ghost type aura with his rescue badge. He's only going to wake if he wants to. The only way to get through to him… That would take a drowzee. He should wake himself us soon. If he does not wake within a few days, please tell me" he said. The pokemon looked at each other uncomfortably.

"Will you be somewhere nearby?" they asked. It was a reasonable question; The pokemon known as Sage was not always around. Sometimes word of his whereabouts would appear as someone sees him training. One of the only ones of his species to focus on his strength.

"Yes" he said, and pointed his snout towards the peak of the mountain "Right at the top of the mountain. I will train there for a while. If he does not wake within two days, please tell me. Of course, you are all allowed to speak to me anytime you wish. Now, before I depart so that I may have time to set up my temporary residence, is there something you wish to speak to me about? Current events?"

The crowd began to clamor, talking about several things at once. The pokemon frowned. "Let us take this one at a time. Please tell me everything that has happened. I will call on you to say something".

The pokemon led his brethren further away from the building. as he prepared to learn of current events, he glanced at the pokemon sleeping in the shack. What he had not told them is that when the ghost sleep is used, it is supposed to turn the sleeper invisible, or at least unnoticed. He worried about that. he also noted the species of the pokemon.

_It has been awhile since I last saw an absol… _he thought.

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**This is the first time i have attempted a third person omniscient point of view. I think that will happen a bit more often, knowing that some characters have not been introduced yet, and others are, well, asleep. Might give some POV for the new character, but i dont even know if he needs a POV. Oh well. **

**I do need a team name for the gossipy bug type team that shows up here. I have most of the information, but no team name. If you have a suggestion, I would appreciate sending it to me via Personal Messaging. If i receive multiple, i will choose one. If i do not recieve any, i will make it up on the fly when they show up in the tournament in book two. **

**Please tell me what you thought of my chapter, or the story in general by reviewing. If you enjoy the story, feel free to follow the story if you wish to receive email notifications for new chapters! I hope you all enjoyed. Have a nice day, everybody!**

**Character bio's still open! I have a whopping SEVEN characters total! huh? you say seven doesn't merit the word 'whopping'? Oh well... Thank you three who submitted character bios anyways! I really appreciate it. **

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	26. Chapter Twenty Six: Patience

**'Sup guys! Jango here. Juuust completed a... Personal project. Lets just call it that. Don't need to talk about that right now. You might find out later when Hyperjade notices... Heh. Cant wait to see his face. This is going to be epic, maybe i don't even need to see it, if he yells loud enough. **

**Try to ignore that for now... Don't need Hyperjade knowing something's up at the moment. Read the chapter instead. You will probably smile later too. See ya!**

**-Jango**

* * *

**Chapter 26: Patience**

**Θ Omniscient POV Θ**

Sage blinked in surprise. "A red absol, you say?" he asked the crowd, and they nodded. One young pokemon piped up: "I haven't seen an absol before" she said in a small voice "is a red color weird?"

"No, no" Sage said "It's just unusual". Sage fidgeted with the small explorer badge pinned to him. "That absol there, it's the usual color". "oh…" the young pokemon said, thinking about the last encounter with the red absol. "Oh! And she had a mightyena with her!"

"A mightyena you say?" Sage asked the child, who nodded vigorously.

_Right then. A red absol and a mightyena arrive in our village… _Sage thought to himself. "Did they need anything?"

"Just rest" a female pokemon piped up from the background "they bickered a bit, told a few stories, and just collapsed in exhaustion".

"Thank you, Shaymin" Sage said. He guessed they might be a couple or something, if they had bickered and then told stories. Or, it was more complicated than that. The only reason Sage had delved into the topic was the fact that the absol was red. quite a rare occurrence. He has only seen one other pokemon with a strange coloring.

What the shaymin he had spoken to had failed to mention was how the mightyena had been the one they had blown off of the side of the mountain. She had realized that maybe Sage would get the wrong idea, and that maybe he would ask what he had been doing very rapidly. He was very protective of his home after all. Shaymin remembered that Mightyena had clearly changed for the better.

That was the last update. Sage was sometimes gone for quite a while, but not too many intense things happen at the shaymin village. He paid a visit to the sleeping absol before he departed for the mountain. He would not use a gracidea to get there. Instead, the little shaymin would brave all of the treacherous rocks near the top. It was a part of his training, in the scenario that it be too cold to fly.

He inspected the absol. The ghost type energy should have made the sleeping pokemon invisible, even if the ghostly energy was not invisible. What worried Sage more was the fact that this absol was using the ghostly energy at all. Why would he? He would have been safe here, what caused him to need to rest so long?

It was possible that the absol just wanted some time to avoid contact. The last absol he had met had been somewhat antisocial, but… This absol's motives confused him. Curled up and snoring, this absol worried him. He tried to discover why when he searched the source of his fear.

Some source of power was putting fear into Sage. It had been a while since the explorer shaymin had experienced any fear. It was not just the ghostly energy, though that probably made it worse. The other shaymin in the village had not mentioned any fear.

Sage frowned down at the sleeping pokemon in front of him. Emotions tend to affect the shaymin species, particularly gratitude. fear could do so, but only the emotions of others.

_My flowers are wilting a little bit… _Sage thought with a start. A negative emotion could do that. Was it sadness? Was it anger? Was it jealousy? Sage could not tell. Based on the fact that the absol had sent himself into a sleep, it sent a strong signal that he was sad, but he could still be angry, still be frustrated. All that Sage knew was that some negative emotion was erupting from this pokemon, enough to make his flowers wilt a little bit already.

Two days, and if this pokemon is still sleeping, Sage would be notified. Then, he would fly to find drowzee. He worried about this. This absol had just been here this morning, so he would not be in any danger of starving, but a few days and he would be extremely hungry. Not leaving the state after that, that could mean trouble. Trouble enough to be willing to starve.

It was for the best to leave him for two days. Trying to wake him up would be pointless anyways. After shaking his head, he walked away to begin his trek to the top of the mountain.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

I looked about, blinking my eyes repeatedly. I tried to find what had hit me, but I was not using my absol sense properly. My eyes just gave me a big blank. Blindness. I would be blind until Chimecho could heal me. I was in trouble. My absol sense going crazy, I was utterly incapable of seeing.

Another hit struck, though it was a bit weaker. "Stop that!" I heard Nincada squeak in the background, but he was too far away to help. Amid the blows I sustained, I forced myself to calm down and focus on what was around me.

_Why am I so terrible at this!?_

Eventually, I could 'see' the breloom. it had backed up and prepared another mach punch. It would be over if I got hit by that. Steeling my nerves, I built a flamethrower in my chest. When the breloom decided to lunge, it got a full flamethrower to the face.

It's cry of pain was drowned out by the flames. One hit KO. My head slumped against the ground, my open eyes failing to see anything. Blindness. I would be blind until I got back to the guild.

I wobbled to a standing position, before Nincada skittered over to me. "Are you alright?" he asked "why are your eyes closed still?" I did not want to tell him. Being blind was a huge hinderance. I opened them to find no change. It had been so bright that my open eyes had taken a huge hit. "Sarah!" Nincada cried out "your eyes…"

"yeah…" I muttered. This seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to me. crippled for the rest of the mission. What fun. I went to roll my eyes, but there was a pain there. "Does it look that bad?" I asked.

"it's like… Like the color leached from your eyes. They look gray" he informed me. Cripes. Gray eyes? Gray would be a good eye color for a normal absol. it would look very uniform on all that black and white. Problem is, I am red. Gray does not go with red. "Great…" I muttered, and Nincada became restless. "You can't see?" he asked worriedly.

"I can use my sense to try and map out my surroundings" I said and Nincada seemed to relax until I said "except i'm not very good at that…" Nincada shuddered. I had to change the subject. I searched for the chest. "Can't 'see' too far… Where is the chest?" I asked. Nincada immediately jumped a bit. "oh, no, you are not going anywhere near that thing". I scowled.

"My vision is gone already. I can't get hurt more" I said. and he looked right at me, and then shook his head. "Debatable…" was all he said. "Just keep enemies away from me" I said "now where is the chest?"

Nincada hesitated, and I looked right at him and gave a glare. Just because I was blind did not mean I was completely blind. My vision had been obliterated, but I am an absol. I can at least use the senses I have. He eventually pointed in a direction, and I went that way. The ground suddenly sloped down, so I knew I was going the right way. The chest still rang out with danger, causing me to want to recoil. Maybe my eyes could get further damaged. Whatever.

I reached the light source, closing my eyes regardless of whether I needed to. The pouch that held the first being open, I placed the light stars in there one by one. There were quite a lot of them; Probably why I had lost my eyesight so quickly looking at them like I had. Stupid breloom…

The light began to lessen apparently, because Nincada drew closer. It took me several minutes, but once every single one was in my bag, nincada sighed. "Much better" he said, climbing up the chest side to peer in. Apparently nothing else was in there. Nincada climbed onto my back. "We'll find the one we were supposed to, then head home to heal you" he said. he was acting quite like a leader.

"You'll have to be my eyes. My absol sense is limited" I told him. he nodded and settled down on my back, prepared to view the landscape in search for another light star. When we headed out, I almost tripped several times. It would take a while to figure out how to navigate purely by absol sense.

I could manage it.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

Floor five.

There was plenty in the way of enemies now. If any group had attacked the seedot… Well, that was actually unlikely. We were the primary targets here, evidenced by the hordes of bug types around. They could not do much damage, though Bastiodon would get hit by the occasional attack. Most attacks bounced off of Bastiodon without damaging anything.

I never let myself get hit with a string shot. Bastiodon would sometimes get wrapped up, but he just would walk through it without much of a problem. Machoke could rip out of string shot. Those two proved to be a decent asset in this dungeon.

So when we found the seedot, it was rather simple to send him home. At the guild, we would receive a reward. Probably would not be much. Regardless, that was it for that job. Job well done. See you next time a seedot gets lost in apple woods.

"Do you want to leave the dungeon now?" I asked servine "you don't have to go with us for our job". She stared at me with a weird look on her face.

"Are you serious?" she asked sarcastically "you helped with our job, we will help with yours". She folded her leafy arms in front of her. I smirked and nodded. That whole act had made the teammates **very **uncomfortable. They were super confused on what was going through our heads. I began my walk to get towards the next floor. The stairs happened to be right there, begging the question as to why the seedot had not gotten himself out of here at least to the next floor.

Everybody followed me. My job was next. Snubbulls are not known for strength. It would be rather easy. My shadow ball would pass right through the normal type, but if Servine did not just smash a crater with her ball and chain, I could take the outlaw out with some other attacks. or, Machoke could just punch it in the face. Victory was assured.

The sixth floor was a bit odd. The rooms were bigger, more expansive, and there were some bigger and better items. "Oh, look" I said, viewing the disk on the ground "I think this is a bullet seed attack".

"We have about fourteen of those" Servine responded dully "from our little treasure find". Right. We did not need TM's. I left the thing alone. Bullet seed isn't too good of a move anyways. However, a caterpie apparently decided that it was certainly good enough for us, trying to hit us with a string shot. Bastiodon just got in the way. The guy was covered in weblike material now. he needed a bath of sorts.

Bastiodon was not the biggest fan of water, though he liked it more than fire. To get cleaned off, he would rather use a broom or something. Machoke would have to help him with that. I was not exactly built to handle a broom.

Our next corridor had something I had not seen for a while within it. There was a big door, several times taller than any of us A massive keyhole rested in it. In front of it was the biggest butterfree I have ever seen. It was easily three times the size of the average butterfree.

"In apple woods?" Servine said "These don't show up here…"

"A lot of things have been changing recently. Ever seen a butterfree that big?" I asked. Servine shook her head. As I joke, I asked "think it knows psychic?" with a smirk on my face.

She scowled at me. "Guess who's going first, smartass?" she asked, and the tangela started giggling uncontrollably. Machoke let out a deep chuckle, and even Bastiodon managed to look amused. I realized I had just offered to fight a massive, probably powerful bug type. "Ah, i've got this" I said, and my team backed up a few steps, as did Servine and her team. I could have just blown up the butterfree from here, but that was just not fancy enough.

instead, I rushed at it, and when it saw me, I had to dodge a silverwind attack. I almost failed to, because it was a pretty big attack as it turned out. The bigger the wings of the bug type, the more expansive the attack. I whirled behind it, and jumped. My strength having been boosted from my ability, I used quick attack and struck the flying bug type in the back. It squeaked with surprise before crashing into the ground. Having landed, with it struggling to get back up, the others could not see me.

Knowing they could not see me, I decided to try something I had been practicing for the tournament. Charging up a shadow ball in my mouth, I made it suddenly split into several dozen small shadow balls that fired out in a wave in front of me, blasting the butterfree unconscious instantly and sending it flying towards my friends, who almost got crushed if Bastiodon had not stepped out from behind to act as a shield. The unconscious pokemon slumped to the ground.

"Oookay then" Servine said. I wondered what she was thinking. Had I just scared her with that? Oh well, it's just how strong my shadow ball eruption trick is. No point in worrying about it. "Well done" she said then.

We focused on the door. "I don't bring dungeon keys to dungeons that don't have these normally" I said defeatedly.

"Fortunately for you, I always take one dungeon key with me. You should too, considering that we each got about two dozen of them in our waterfall cave haul" Servine said, her vine reaching into her bag seemingly on it's own and pulling out a key that looked far too big for the bag. It's good that those things are bigger on the inside.

The gargantuan key slotted neatly into it's respective door, and once Servine twisted it, the key glowed and vanished. Five seconds later, the door did the same. Behind the door was… Nothing. Nothing valuable anyways. There were some gummis, but the room was small.

"Dissapointment city" Servine murmured, viewing the gummis. "Purple, red, white… Nothing we can use".

"I guess that's what we get for wasting a key on a locked room in a pathetic dungeon like this" I replied, eliciting a nod from Servine. The others looked rather disappointed.

"No matter. We should not waste too much time here" I said. Servine nodded again. She evidently decided to lead the way to the next floor, considering how she started to move before I did. It seemed we were taking turns being the leader, which made sense really, in the absence of… Caleb.

_Damn. I can't even go a few hours without thinking about the poor guy…_

Caleb's leadership skills had made his contributions to the team essential. If he had been here, we would have waited for him to start, because we all thought of him as the leader. I wondered what he would think of that.

Servine was making her way through the next room when my thought process was interrupted once again by an annoying swarm of bugs. After the dust settled, about twenty weedles had been downed. A few other bug types had joined the pile as well.

"Sewaddles" Servine said, poking one of the unconscious bug and grass types with her sword lightly "That's new".

I certainly had not seen these guys in this dungeon ever before. normally, sewaddles were prevalent in forest dungeons of different continents altogether. The world really was changing, and at a very fast pace.

"Stairs there" Bastiodon rumbled, looking into the distance. He was looking through a short corridor towards the next room, where the stairs had been. It was surrounded by taller grass, but clearly visible. "Ten to one that grass is hiding more bugs" I said. Servine nodded.

I thought we would just jump through, but Servine had a different idea. She pawned off her sword to her vine, and grabbed her flail with the vines. That basically created two super long range weapons. With a good couple slashes, she managed to clear away the grass. There were in fact a few sewaddle within the grass, minding their own business. They took a nasty hit. They were super resistant to grass type moves, but sewaddles are profoundly weak. One hit KO's were possible.

So one staircase later, we were planning on taking down one silly outlaw.

"Not right here" I grunted, realizing that the outlaw would probably avoid us at all cost. Servine looked about quite a bit. "He's a hider" she muttered "i hate it when they do that. Cowards…"

"They tend to be cowards, especially recently" I said. She was right. They run when they see us nowadays, having gotten it through their skulls that rescue teams are there to mess them up. Nowadays, more and more of them run away or hide instead of ambushing teams at the staircase. It was annoying. I preferred straight up fights. Apparently Servine did as well.

"If we sprint around, we might find him. Shall we split up?" I asked. Servine thought about it for a bit. I could hear the tangela shaking themselves. Still not wanting to be around me eh?

"Sure. Let's end this quickly" she responded. She split off from us, racing way too fast for the tangela to follow. They tried, however, but we would all get separated. "You two take that exit" I told my teammates, gesturing towards another corridor.

As for me, I decided to go alone into a final exit. I just wish I had turned left instead.

_So many butterfrees. So… Many…_

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

So after I had placed my weapons back in my hands, I met enemy after enemy. So many bugs. Bugs creep me out, actually, now that I think about it. The eat leaves. Plants. I'm a plant. I was **edible**. This thought kept arriving in my head ever since Caleb told me I tasted like spinach.

_What is spinach, anyways? Caleb had said it was a plant. An edible plant. _

I guess humans can eat lots of things then. Wait, why was I thinking about this? Probably because of the parallel between humans and these freaking bugs. However, they evidently could eat plenty of things. And like pecha berries a lot. And eat something called spinach. I should probably ask Caleb to elaborate.

_If he comes back. _

Ouch. Even thinking about bug eating habits turned the topic to Caleb. Geez. I could not even deal with my own form thinking about it. I was dinner. That terrified me. Hopefully if Caleb ever showed up, he would tell me that humans can eat a lot of things or something.

Now I was wondering what they eat. Time to change the topic. New topic: Destruction of pathetic bugs. stab that one, smash the other. Lunge at a few while swinging my ball and chain behind me to avoid getting jumped.

That worked pretty well actually. I felt something get smashed behind me. I turned long enough to see a beautifly. Another thing I have not seen very often in this dungeon. New aspects of dungeons were popping up so often nowadays. I tried to forget about it.

One room of enemies later, my tangela caught up to me. The little goofballs had not split up like the plan. I smirked to myself, my back turned. Then, I stabbed another bug type fool. Goodness, these enemies were pathetic.

There was no snubbull though. I wanted to find a snubbull. I was going to find the others now, having searched a lot of rooms. I ran towards the center of the floor, having gone through an entire side of the dungeon. Meeting no enemies, I got to a large room. With play-perfect timing as Mightyena showed up on the opposite side ot the room. A few moments later, we seemed to notice how simultaneous that was.

"Interesting…" I said, and he nodded. We were in an empty room. It was nice here. The sun streamed through in several places, the sun somewhat past noon. The tree branches stretched out making a intricate roof with many gaping holes. The roof was also lower, and it had basically looked like a impressive jungle gym. I needed these trees as my new roof. But, I could not do that. I could not just teleport stuff out of a dungeon. Even if I was a psychic type, I could not teleport it out of a dungeon.

Bastiodon chose that time to show up in a third corridor, Machoke in tow. I waited for the tangela to show up with even more excellent timing. However, they did not.

I viewed the rest of the room. It was devoid of apples for some reason. Why? Every room in apple woods had at least two apples lying about, as the dungeon goes. This room had none. I viewed the room around me. There was a bush in the corner, cleverly colored like the rest of the dungeon, but bushes did not show up here.

"Gotcha…" I whispered so quietly not even Mightyena could hear. With one motion, I flicked my hand, the sword in it sailing straight into the bush.

"**OW!**" a voice cried out, prompting a certain outlaw to stumble out of the bush. clever little hiding spot, but bushes are practically non existential within the apple woods. A perfect spot to hide, however.

"Ohhhh, i'll get you now!" the wimpy 'outlaw' yelled, trying to be frightening. I heard the others come up behind me while the silly pink pokemon charged me. I allowed him to get closer, my arms crossed, my frown slightly exaggerated. His charge was sloppy, he was frightened. When he neared me, I sidestepped with ease.

**BONG!**

Snubbull had just headbutted Bastiodon, with pathetic effects. He slid down for a moment before he flopped off, landing on his back. He was out cold. Mightyena checked on him. "Was a flashy and exciting battle too much to ask for?" he asked nobody in general, bringing a smirk to my face.

"Maybe you wanted me to outdo you" I ventured, causing him to whip his head around. "in your dreams" he said, causing my arrogant grin to widen a bit "You won't be outdoing my battle with moves like that" he taunted.

"We'll see how that turns out when I slam you into the floor during the tournament" I shot back. His little smirk appeared on his face "Or when I blow you up within an instant" he returned. Our little verbal war was brewing, and probably would have been pretty fun, but we were interrupted.

The tangela staggered into the room, breathing somewhat heavily, with some damage on their bodies. "You two sure missed an epic battle" I said sarcastically, but how how would they know? They had not been there. They warily viewed the unconscious snubbull, and I was almost dying of laughter inside. My face was straight outside, however.

"See ya at the cafe" Mightyena said, before disappearing with a flash of light along with his team. The moment he did, what the tangela were running from became apparent. A horde of large bug types. Whirlipedes. some sewaddles, even a leavanny. A freaking bug type, leafy eating army.

"Nope!" I said, before zapping my team back to the guild as well.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

We walked along. Not being able to see was freaky for me, but it would be so much worse than being a pokemon without another way to tell where I was. Being an absol was great, though i'm not the best at doing absol like things.

So when we were walking along, I realized that without Nincada, I would be screwed. I did not have the greatest sense range, in fact it's just about the worse. Either way, Nincada knew when I had gone to an area before… Somehow. It was very helpful.

"Being blind sucks" I commented, causing Nincada to sigh. "Maybe you should not have stuck your head into a chest full of light stars with your eyes open" he replied, having been tired of my commenting on the situation every fifteen minutes.

"Hey, I was thrown in there by a breloom" I said in defence of myself, causing him to just shake his head in exasperation. I guess I have been somewhat annoying. Guess what? So was the fact that I was freaking **blind**. Venting about that was good enough for me to avoid being insanely annoyed about the topic.

It was pretty much fine, because this place was nothing but a bunch of hills. It would be extremely annoying if the place looked amazing and beautiful. Thankfully, rolling hills were just a little mundane. The sky had been pretty, though. Shame I could not see that.

My eyes being grey was going to be a little annoying when I got home. Several pokemon would see that when I got back, before I could be healed by Chimecho. So many people saying 'oh my goodness what on earth happened to your eyes?'. Boy, that's going to be pitiful.

"Sarah, could you stop for a moment?" Nincada asked. I complied instantly, almost tripping in the process. "Could you turn to the left?"

I did so. "Not that far left" I heard. I looked back to the right. "Good enough".

I began to travel forward, as Nincada began to rummage in my bag. "What are you looking for?" I asked. He did not reply, just dug into the large bag. Finally, he dragged something out of it. A little star shaped item. "One of the light stars? Only one? How will that hel-... Oooooooohhhhhhhh" I finished, noticing that if he wanted to find a light star, he could just use another. "Is it glowing?"

"Yep" he said "doesn't mean anything for distance, because it's the quantity of them that determines brightness, but if it snaps off, i'll know it" he said.

"Why pull it out now? How far does this proximity thing go?"

"Don't know. However, the other one should glow as well. Try going over that hill".

"Hill? My sense is pretty short range nincada. It's flat here" I reminded him. He sighed. "Of all times for you to go blind… It's to the right a little bit". I turned. "Too far right". I turned back a bit and began to walk. Sure enough, the ground began an incline, almost tripping me Once I reached the top, Nincada looked around.

"Ah" he said, raising a claw and pointing in a direction. Following the direction his claw was pointing, I arrived at my destination. A small crystal star shaped item was just sitting there. It was more visible than the other objects, just like the crystal Nincada was holding. When Nincada put his away, the one on the ground faded 'till it was just as mundane as a regular object.

I picked the thing up, letting Nincada take it from me, before he put it away in a different pouch. This was because it was the request item. Job done. Soon, I would have my eyesight back, and well timed as well. I hoped that it would be quick, and maybe that Chimecho would be the first to notice the issue.

"Shall we go?" I asked Nincada, who just nodded. I was going to use my badge, but Nincada decided to use his first. With a **ZAP! **and a flash of light that I could not see (i knew it was there, though), we warped to the guild.

Once I felt the ground beneath my feet, I observed the area without moving. The beds were in between me and the door. I walked around them. I closed my currently useless eyes in order to avoid problems with the other guild members. As I walked, others called to me.

"Why are your eyes closed?"

"No reason…" I lied.

"Hey, Sarah… What's up with having your eyes closed and all?"

"Training my absol sense to see without them in case of emergencies" I lied.

Getting up the ladder was a challenge. I almost fell off part of the way up, but I kept my claws dug into the porous material. All the holes in it were due to others climbing up it with similar usages. I'll bet this ladder has to be replaced every once in a while. The second floor welcomed me with several more questions, for which I had a lie prepared.

Chimecho was dead ahead, having just finished talking to some random team. They seemed to look like small Mightyena's, but I could not be sure. "Oh, hello, Sarah! Is there anything I can do for you today?" she asked sweetly.

"I guess you could say that…" I muttered, opening my useless eyes. She floated back almost a meter in surprise. "Oh, no! Not that! Hang on one second!"

She began to move back and forth, a chiming sound coming from her, resonating throughout the air. I felt the damage on my face disappear. My eyesight would take far longer to heal. Therefore I stood there while Chimecho kept talking while she healed me.

"What the heck did you do to your eyes?! she demanded. I mumbled something about falling into a chest filled with shining crystals face first with my eyes open. That in itself sounded slightly ludicrous, and Chimecho was a bit mad about my decision making before I clarified that I had been tossed in by a breloom.

"Hey, I can see a blur now" I commented after about three minutes. It took a long time to heal blindness apparently. "Did you just keep staring into it for a while?!" Chimecho exclaimed, prompting a blush to come to my face and for Nincada to poke me with his claw in a way that said 'i told you so'. I ignored him.

Did I mention I suck at decision making?

After about five minutes, I could stop using my absol sense. And it just kept getting better. The rest of my wounds were gone. When my vision finally, **finally **snapped back to full clarity, I felt perfectly healthy.

"You should have left the dungeon the instant that happened" Chimecho said, making me focus on her. Oh man, it was good to see again. Yet, it seemed Chimecho had some bad news for me. "You said your eyesight was back to full?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Because while your eyes are mostly back to normal, theres a few tiny gray flecks in them. Nothing anybody would see without being up close, but there are grey flecks in your eye color now" Chimecho said sadly.

_**What**__!? __**WHAT**__!?_

"**WHAT!?**" I yelled in shock, causing everybody in the room to whip their heads around and stare. I immediately shut my stupid yap. I should at least apologize.

"I-... I'm sorry, Chimecho" I stammered, feeling more than a little embarrassed. She recovered slowly, leaving me to think for a minute. A permanent change in eye color, huh? Blue with flecks of gray? What would others think? What would Caleb think?

_Stop that. _

"It's all right, Sarah" Chimecho said soothingly, though she still seemed shaken "It's a normal reaction. Honestly, coupled with the sky blue, I think it looks rather… well, it doesn't look bad at all".

I gave her a strange look. "You think so?" I asked. She got a closer look. "Well, they look much more detailed, instead of that monotone blue. Even from a distance, they actually look deeper".

_Huh. _

"Soooo, good thing?" I asked slowly, resulting in a vigorous nod from Chimecho, who apparently was super relieved: Disaster averted. Eyes in acceptable condition. "i'm sorry for yelling at you" I said, and promptly left. So many eyes staring at me. That had been so much more public than what I wanted. It was my fault anyways.

_At least it seems to not be so bad… Maybe I can handle having a slight color change in the eyes. At least I can see. _

As I prepared to take a nap before dinner, my thoughts turned to Caleb again. I was worried about him. I thought that he may not come back, and what would happen to him? Would he get lost somewhere, wandering for ages, living his life alone somewhere. He would not be happy. He would not be helped.

What could I do about it? I would wait a few days first. If he did not come back for two days, I would talk to Wigglytuff about sending out a letter out to discover where he was. Not to bring him back, just to find out where he was at this moment. If I could do that, and if the response was that he was doing well, I would not go after him.

I promised myself that I would not go and find him if we were told that he was fine. I promised. I really hoped that I could live up to that. I hoped that my love would not get in the way. What I really wanted was to be with him, but if he was not happy… It would be pointless.

So I promised. I told myself that I would not go after him if I was told that he was in good health. I was setting myself up for failure, but for once it was the right thing to do. Two days before I send a letter out. I would just have to be patient

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

"Oh, my" I said, discovering the impressive taste of my new combination of a grass gummi, a cheri berry, and a persim berry. "This is much better than just having a grass gummi drink".

"This is awesome" Mightyena said, having not listened. He was taking a rare break from his tamato berry and black gummi drink. I had no idea how he could consume such spicy stuff. He had actually put in a tamato berry. The spiciest stuff in the world. Literally makes some pokemon breath fire when consumed. Mightyena was drinking it along with the two black gummis within his drink. It was impossible.

He took another drink before setting it down and looking at me. "What?" he asked, and I realized I was staring at him. "Oh… just realizing again that you are drinking something like that. How can you deal with such spicy food?"

"Actually, it's kind of a part of my training. That and I do enjoy the taste of it, once you get past the spiciness" he replied. I looked at the black and red swirls in his drink. "Planning against fire types?" I asked.

"Or Sarah" he replied "gotta be able to take a little heat if she ends up fighting us in the tournament". I frowned at his connection. Sarah would certainly be an issue if she tried to fight us, but like the other teams, Bastiodon could likely just blow her up with flash cannon.

Speaking of our teammates, Bastiodon was feasting on this pudding like silver and blue substance made from a silver gummi and two oran berries. Tasty stuff to him, though I don't know what those silver gummis were actually made of. Probably have some sort of metal in them. Maybe silver. Would make sense.

Machoke was having a fruit and berry smoothie, made from an oran berry, a pecha berry, and a banana. Ever since the guy had tried one of the bananas that Caleb had picked before he had arrived, he found he really liked them. So, Machoke had asked Mightyena at some point to get or buy some of them. Mightyena surprised both of his teammates by saying 'sure'. Apparently, anyways.

The tangela were sharing one glass of pure grass gummi drink. They really enjoyed grass gummis, more than most. They took turns taking a big drink of the stuff. They literally did everything together, the little grass types. my teammates were strange, but they were certainly reliable.

"So" Mightyena began, making me turn my attention back to him "Anything happen before you left the dungeon?"

"Uh…" I said, unwilling to tell him about our rather hasty retreat. The tangela twins started to giggle again, prompting a smirk to appear on Mightyena's face. He knew that when the tangela started laughing, it was because I did, said, or caused something embarrassing. He did not even ask. No need to know.

My own drink was disappearing rapidly, almost without my knowledge. It was **that **good. I tried to slow down. I was enjoying having some time to just talk with friends.

_I really do consider Mightyena a friend now. Kind of rivals at this point. And he had impressed me with that fight against the giant butterfree. _

Next topic… "So" I said, and the entire group looked straight at me. "Giant butterfree: Dungeon spawned test, or just pure chance?"

Mightyena tilted his head a bit in thought. He was having trouble deciding. "We probably could bicker about it for hours" he finally replied "we'll never know". He was right. We never would know. Not knowing things frustrated me, but nothing could be done.

"Right" was all I said, before returning my attention to my delicious drink. This place was a favorite. Not just for me, but for a lot of pokemon. Some days, Spinda had to pull out extra tables for the customers. Many rescue teams came in here after their missions, and if the timing was wrong, so many of them showed up Spinda started to get dizzy trying to accommodate them.

Today, at this time, it was about half full. It was maybe a few more minutes before a certain loudred came in. Loudred was chatting very loudly with another pokemon, Sunflora. Loudred was announcing how there was some commotion when team edge had gotten back to the guild. I was a little excited before I realized that it just meant Sarah and Nincada. Apparently Sarah had gotten a little over reactive about something. Would not be the first time.

This made me realize something. Sarah may be responsible, but what was done was done. Sarah loved Caleb enough to go mad and chase him. That was Sarah. Who she was. We could no longer treat her like this. It was time to forgive Sarah.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

"We need to have a little chat" Servine said, looking straight at me "alone". Had she gone mad? What was up with her?

The tangela apparently thought that she was insane as well. Machoke nudged me, a slightly worried look on his own face. What the heck was happening to all of us? We were all crazy right?

Then, it dawned on me what she wanted to talk about. "Ah. The little announcement?" I asked. She replied: "Sort of…". What did that mean? I sighed. "Just let me finish my drink first" I told her, grabbing the glass and tilting it up again. The spicy substance fell down my throat. Such delicious stuff if you could handle the spiciness.

I managed to drain the stuff, and went on to wait for Servine to finish her drink, which was mostly gone. The others had finished theirs, so we all made her uncomfortable on purpose with our stares. She pretended to ignore us, sipping down her interesting combination drink. Cheri and persim, really? I know that the grass gummis are great for grass types, but the berries did not go together, in my humble opinion.

_Okay, maybe not so humble, but…_

"Right" Servine said finally, slamming her cup into the table in a manner that says "I am done. This is over". "You two go back to the grove" she addressed the tangela. I looked at my teammates. "You two do likewise. Off to the cave" I told them. They reluctantly nodded and began the journey away and out of the place. Servine watched them leave.

"Aaand we're off" she said, after they had been gone for a minute. The tangela were not insane enough to disobey Servine, but Machoke had seemed worried about me. Was it that they did not trust Servine? Why? "Right" I said, standing up. We left quickly, emerging into the sunlight. The sun was setting, but it would be several more hours. "Hmmm…" Servine said "Probably should be somewhere secluded to avoid people sneaking in to hear the topic. Not everybody needs to know about Caleb".

"Right" I said.

_I seem to say that a lot… Oh well. _

We travelled away from town, towards a place where the only way people could hear us if they were a super hearing sensitive pokemon like me, or in the clearing themselves. "You wanted to talk about Sarah" I guessed.

"Yeah. You know everything that happened, except for when you were, you know, trying to kill us all" she said reluctantly. Should I tell her that I was conscious when that happened, and that I simply could not control myself? Yeah, I should. Problem was, it would be difficult to do so.

"Uh…" I began, not really planning out what I was going to say. What could I say? How could I say it? "Out with it!" Servine said, her attention on me. "Uh… Well, I just was thinking. I could not control myself during that ordeal, but…" I faltered. Servine was still waiting on me. "I could still see, feel, and think. I just could not… Control anything" I finished. I had gotten it out.

Servine was looking horrified at that. "Oh" she said simply. After a few tense moments had passed, she winced. "I didn't know…" she whispered. I nodded and looked away towards the trees to my right. Why I was looking over there I did not know.

"Do you think Caleb knew what was happening too?" I asked, and Servine flinched again. "I don't know… Maybe that was why he was so silent when he came out of it… I stopped him from saying anything, thinking that talking to us would make it worse… Do you think that helped cause him to stay?

"I think everything that happened to him helped him stay" I replied truthfully. Servine sighed and sat back, looking up at the sky. After about five minutes of silence she said: "You know we have to forgive Sarah, right?"

"Servine…"

"We do. While She was at the most fault, it was not all of her fault. We all made mistakes that led to this, and I really think that Caleb's mind had not considered Sarah as he was deciding, at least not much. With only Sarah hounding him, he probably would be home right now… We're all to blame, and we can't keep pretending we're not. Sarah really was blinded, you know. Blinded by her love. We have no such excuse".

I waited while she finished her monologue. She was right, but she had not taken everything into account… The thing she was missing was rather personal to me. "Servine, she asked me to betray Caleb" I reminded her "i planned to stop her, but that had to mean betraying her instead. I was going to anyway, but it did not work out. You know that. how can I forgive Sarah for asking me to do that, putting me in a position where I had to betray **somebody**?"

Servine blinked at that. She seemed very thoughtful. For two minutes, she just stared at the sky. "Yeah…" she murmured. Then she looked right at me. "We need to forgive her anyways. You know that. It's over. If we just keep being angry at Sarah, nothing will come of it".

"Nothing will come of it…" I echoed. She was right. I could not hold it against Sarah. She may not be innocent, but she was certainly blinded by love. In fact, she was practically drowning in her love for Caleb.

_I am no longer blinded as such. _

Yet, Sarah was. Caleb was gone for now, and Sarah was probably devastated. I did not want to forgive her entirely, but anybody so blinded by love would be pushed to any extent. After I thought about that, I realized that despite my stubbornness, I no longer felt real anger towards Sarah. I could forgive her. I could treat her like I could now treat others. Now, I was fully a changed pokemon.

I nodded. There were no words needed to describe this anyways. Servine seemed surprised that I was complying. Really, I had just forgiven her. Maybe I had even had a better time of it than Servine had. Servine, to her credit, said nothing either. She went from her sitting position to flopping on her back. I guess she was more tired from the day than I was.

She seemed to be content just staring into the sky. I meanwhile, focused on trying to forgive Sarah. The way to do it, I once learned, was to imagine an image of the person you are trying to forgive, and focus on being calm, collected.

_It's been awhile since I have done this…_

Just sadness and defeat awaited me when I thought about her. No anger at this point. I wondered why. Maybe I felt that I had failed in giving up in loving her. I argued to myself that it was not so much giving up, but I did not really believe myself. Instead, I shoved down every emotion and left nothing. Completely neutral. Sarah was a random absol to me. Now I just had to find out what it meant when I thought of someone as just a random person to me.

Now I could only wait and be patient while Caleb decides whether to come back. I hoped I could wait for that to work out. if it did. I could only do that while he was gone. Would he come back? Would he flee to some other country and hide away, pretending that he was some normal absol, pretending that nothing had transpired? Would Caleb do that?

Servine clearly did not want to talk anymore. I had understood, and she knew it. So, I turned away. I walked off, leaving her to lie there and think things through. Sometimes. Servine's thought process confused me intensely.

I wandered back towards home. I would just have to get on with my life. However, I could instead do some training alone. I had to have something to keep around for the third part of the tournament where the fights were one on one. I needed something to keep secret until I truly needed it.

_Maybe I could…_

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

It turns out I am not patient. I wandered about around the guild, and through the town trying to take my mind off of Caleb Instead, I tried to focus on the tournament. There was no arena being built right now. I wondered when they would start. Soon, right? Arenas would take time to build right?

No arena was around, but I noticed that with all of the housing places for pokemon that were coming from the different place were avoiding a large area. I blinked. Hey, wow. This massive empty spot meant that the arena would be about as big as the space right? This was massive.

The houses… Some were made of wood, some made of dirt somehow, one… Was that metal? None of them were built of crystals, which I would have liked a lot. When we graduated from the guild, I wanted to go and grab a ton of beautiful crystals and build us a house. Or get somebody else to do it. I really can't build stuff.

_If I think being four legged sucks, what would Caleb think?_

Oh, and now I am thinking of Caleb again. Nothing would happen without having something to do with Caleb, and my thoughts always turned to Caleb. Caleb. Everything I do causes me to think about him. He was always on my mind.

_He always will be. Trying to forget him is pointless. Caleb, what can I do to find you? One more day, and I will send out a letter. I will find out where you are. If you are in trouble, I will try to get to you. _

I kept promising myself that. I kept promising, but if I found out where he was, would I actually stay here if he was safe? Probably not. Even I knew that I could not control myself. I just felt so much more… Alive when he was around.

I wanted so much to find him, and the feeling grew constantly. I really was obsessed wasn't i? How could I deal with that? Should I be dealing with it at all? Should I try to abandon my love for Caleb, or should I just go with it? Should I search him out?

_One more day… One more day… I can handle it…_

Could I handle it? Could I manage to hold myself back? Could I stop myself from rushing off tomorrow? Could I do anything? Why am I so obsessed, and why can't I let myself forget about him?

The only person who could tell me was probably Caleb. I could ask him. If he did tell me, would it be easier to let him go? I would have to find Caleb to ask him, and I knew I would not be able to hold myself back… What was I to do?

_Can I possibly handle it if he's gone forever?_

* * *

**Hey, everybody! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I know that you guys REALLY want to know what's going to happen with Caleb. Well i know. Not telling you just yet though! HAHAHAA... Well, you guys will get some more story before that happens. **

**Either way, i hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I certainly enjoyed writing it. **

**Please review, please tell me what you think! Please, if you enjoyed the story, and want to receive updates for more by email, please follow/favorite! Character Bio's welcome and wanted! **

**Thank you all for reading this chapter, and i hope you continue to enjoy it in the future. Good day!**

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**Nickname:**

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	27. Chapter Twenty Seven: The Letter

**Chapter 27: The Letter**

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

_Patience be damned…_

_I can't be so needy that I can't go three days without him. _

_What if he leaves today? What if-_

_What if he doesn't? The thing is, it's his choice…_

_It shouldn't be…_

_Why would I say that? I took his home from him, he should at least decide what to do with his new life…_

_He will never love me if I give him a choice…_

_He will never love me if I try to force him to…_

_A lost cause… Why not go now?_

_Because I promised. _

That was the thought process in my dreams last night, the same one that I ran through my head over and over during most of today. Today had been boring. Go to some insignificant dungeon that I have never seen before, finish the job, store the light crystals with the help of Kangaskhan, pace in our room for hours on end.

That was what I was doing right now. Jobs done, chores done, just waiting until it neared dinnertime to talk to Wigglytuff about the letter I would send out. The more I waited, the more I worried. What if Caleb was doing something rash? Nobody knew how humans worked. Their minds were a confusing concept. What would Caleb do if he thought that nothing would ever go right for him?

It approached dinnertime after an hour and a half. Nincada was in the corner of the room, actually dozing off. "It's nearing dinnertime" I said to him. Nincada was always a light sleeper. "Okay…" he said softly, his tiny eyes opening. I left without another word. Too much turmoil going on in my head. Nincada could handle a slight walk.

First and foremost, Wigglytuff's room. I could hear talking from within. Despite my incredible urge to burst in, I forced patience on myself. It was nearly torturous. What if Chimecho called for dinner before these goofballs stopped yammering?

Fortunately, they went silent after a few minutes. I counted to five before pushing open the heavy door with my head. Chatot and Wigglytuff looked over to see me.

"Oh, hiya, Sarah!" Wigglytuff said, waving and gesturing for me to come closer. Chatot seemed as grumpy as always, muttering something before flying off. As the door closed, I realized that I was alone with the somewhat terrifying guildmaster. "So what did you need?" he asked cheerfully, and I almost flinched.

"I have been worried…" I began, now unsure if I wanted to continue. Wigglytuff seemed to stare straight into my soul with those freaky eyes. "I mean, about Caleb. The fact that he was human prior… We don't know what he will do" I choked out. Wigglytuff still said nothing.

"I'm just… I'm worried about him. I want to at least know where he is" I got out. He looked at me for a while. Then, he smiled. "Oh, I see!" he said cheerfully "though it's a bit early to know. What do you want to do?" he asked.

I smiled. "I want to send a letter out. I want to just know where he is, and what condition he's in. Could you do that for me Wigglytuff? Please?" I begged, giving him my most pleading look. He was still smiling broadly.

"Of course I can!" he said "i'll send out a request for an update on Caleb. It will also contain his description and all that. We'll find out where he is, don't worry!". Wigglytuff began dancing in the spot, spinning and jumping. It bewildered me to watch it go down.

Finally, he stopped. He looked right at me. "Anything else?" he asked. I had gotten just what I had wanted. I shook my head at the pink pokemon in front of me. "Then i'll get to writing that letter right away!" he cried out, before rushing to the shelves on the left side of the room.

I realized that dinner would be soon. "Don't forget to eat" I told the goofball guildmaster on my way out. I could not hear his reply, if one was even spoken. Why had I been afraid of him at all? As long as I did not make him angry, I was golden. He seemed to be so much smarter than he looked.

I wondered if Caleb himself would see the letter. I hoped that he would not if it would make him angry. Yet, if he wanted to know we were looking for him, and would feel like he was needed or have something to go to, I wanted him to know somebody was looking out for him. The only thing was, my name on there would not do him any good.

That almost brang a tear to my eye. It was my fault. It was all my fault, and it was likely that Caleb knew it. He was smart. It could only be a good thing that he did not know what he had become in that cavern. Knowing that, he would never come back.

**Ding ding ding! **"Dinner's ready!" I heard, immediately causing a stampede that I was admittedly a part of. Dinner was always something to rush into, considering how much work each day is. Dinner involved bananas again.

Really good food, bananas are. That and mago berries. It's too bad we don't have many of those in our storage, or I would use them in a drink at Spinda's. I've only tried a few of them. To my utter delight, both were available in my bowl of berries for dinner.

Nincada dug into his berry bowl, which was nowadays having less food in there than the others. This was because Nincada did not need to eat much. I stopped focusing on the bug type the instant that Chatot told us to begin eating. I did. I started scarfing my food the immediate moment he said that, much like the rest of the others.

It was almost sad how fast the mago berries disappeared. The bananas I somehow managed to save for last, trying to slow down just a bit. The first time I had had one of these was when Caleb had identified as a viable food. I mentally laughed at the thought, remembering the joke he had played on me. It had been so horrible to me at the time, but it was hilarious now. Such was the nature of fun jokes.

The bananas disappeared far too quickly. I actually licked it clean, hoping to get the remainder of delicious berry juices. Hunger was a foreign concept at this moment in time, but it was just too **good**.

Getting my head to the bottom of the bowl had been a challenge in itself. My horn was annoying. With extreme difficulty I managed it. My thoughts were again on Caleb. The same questions bubbling in my head. Instead, I tried to remember my time with him. Meeting him and realizing that he treated me like a normal person despite that I had been different from anything that I have ever seen.

He had been uncomfortable with me from the start, but at the time I had imagined that it had been because he liked me a little as well, and that he was just awkward. Wishful thinking. I had been willing to invent ideas in his head. How stupid was i, to think that he was thinking what I wanted him to think.

"Off to bed, everyone!" Chatot called from the other end of the table. We all nodded and stood up. Off to bed with us. I thought about how I had imagined what Caleb was thinking. I really screwed with my perception of him, didn't i?

The problem was, that I did not only love him because I misinterpreted things. I loved him because he was a strong, capable leaders with impressive muscles and his leadership skills. His muscles were obvious in his legs. His fur was soft. He was just… Awesome. I was crazy for him, and I knew it. I could not let him go. if I found him again, I could not stop myself from trying to move forwards with our relationship.

Why was that? Why was I so much of a freaktoid about him? Again, he was the only one who could tell me.

_I just can't win…_

**㉌9Sage's POV㉌9**

I padded down the mountain again. I had been training for two days now. Any shaymin looking up at the mountain would see the occasional green laser or energy ball fly from the top. The flower garden was not damaged, thankfully. I had placed my item away in the bag, unwilling to fly down. I had to brave these crags and rocks on foot if I wanted to prove to myself I could handle environmental troubles, especially if I had to deal with ice using enemies.

The reason I was coming down at all was the absol. I was going to come down on my own to check, but some sky forme shaymin had decided to fly up to me and give me an update. No movement. The absol still slept. It was time for me to figure out what to do.

The village was not in view yet. I had plenty of spikes of rock to deal with before I could even see it. I pondered once again why this absol was here at all. Why choose this place to take a two day nap? Why not wake himself up? What makes him want to avoid any contact with the world?

_Well, absols are known for being reclusive…_

Not that reclusive. They would need to eat, to drink water. This guy was no different. The problem was, if he wanted to stay asleep, he would. Even a drowzee could not wake him up with that ghost energy, even though we could talk to him. That meant that the only person we have that can talk to this guy or let someone else talk to that guy was the ex criminal Drowzee. Not too many drowzee were around this continent.

The village came into view. the smell of gracadeas reached my nose. What a great smell that was. I knew that my extremely positive reaction to the smell was because I was a shaymin, but I do know that other pokemon find the smell quite appealing as well.

My path to the place was rather slow. It was a winding trail with unforgiving rocks if you tried to cut across it. It was steep as well. I wanted to just fly down there, but I forced myself not to. My hurting paws would be stronger the next time. And the next.

I wondered if this absol had a nickname. The armor on his chest suggests that he is a fighter, and he would be known by somebody. What would he be called? The question is begging for me to try and answer another one: Why was I called Sage? It was just my nickname since I was a kid. I never knew why.

I realized that I must actually be going pretty fast, considering that in my musings I had managed to come closer to the village. Maybe I was better at my job, or maybe the smell of flowers spurred me on. Either way, I was making decent time. That boded well for the future tournament. I had been rather young last time, and I had been swatted away. Literally.

_My first concern should be the sleeping absol _I chided myself. My first priority was making sure that this pokemon was going to be in good health. I needed to get drowzee if he was in poor condition.

He had not eaten for two days. He needed to. The village was bustling with activity, an extremely rare sight. As I arrived, I saw why. There was a pelipper circling overhead. I realized that the construction of at least one mailbox was in order, considering that we did not have one. I needed to deal with it.

Looking into my explorer bag, I viewed my gracidea flower, the special item in my bag, and linked my aura to it mentally. The effect was nearly instantaneous, and my transformation allowed me to fly. I reached the pelipper in moments.

"Something you need?" I asked hastily. It was not a good idea to annoy a pelipper. He gave me a 'why have you not built a mailbox yet, you silly pokemon' glare. I winced and waited for him to drop something. A single letter fluttered from his mouth, and I had to dive to catch it. The pelipper soared away as I flew down quickly.

Upon landing, I allowed my form to change back. I tossed the letter to somebody else. "Open that" I ordered. I needed to check on my 'patient'. He still slept, curled up in the little house. With a slight flinch, I realized that I had given a direct order, and I probably did not sound happy. That was not who I was supposed to be. I amma shaymin. I should be acting like it.

Onto the major issue. The absol was in the exact same place. There was no evidence of movement. He had not woken up at any point and snuck out for food. Furthermore, he looked like he had not eaten in two days. he was ever so slightly skinnier than before. Malnutrition was not good for pokemon. It is one of the ways that can actually result in… Death.

What a scary point. If a pokemon starves himself/herself for about a week, their body needs food badly. They could even die. That was why no pokemon should be able to ignore their instincts to get food. The fact that this guy could ignore his instincts, and he was visible through the ghost type energy, and that he was here at all, sleeping. That all worried me tremendously.

"Sage! Sage!" someone shouted from behind me, as I began to turn around. A female voice. The female shaymin ran up to me, the opened letter in her mouth. "It's about the absol!"

_What a coincidence. What timing. _

"Really?" I asked, unconvinced. She practically thrust it at me, so I assumed it must be important. I held it down on the ground with my paws, and read it aloud.

"Dear residents of the shaymin village-... Okay whoever wrote this needs writing lessons… Such a messy scrawl…" I muttered, cutting off from the letter for a moment.

"This is one of the many letters sent out in search of a certain pokemon. The leader of a rescue team has been missing for multiple days, an absol that goes by the name Caleb. He appears as a normal absol, however he wears armor. If anyone receiving this letter has found or is currently in the company of this absol, please reply. Please tell us in what state of health he is in, and what he is doing. Please respond to Wigglytuff's guild".

I looked up at the absol. Caleb, was he? Armor clad, absol, team leader badge. Yeah, this was the guy. What timing. So much coincidence.

"Shaymin, can you please get somebody who can write?" I asked without looking around. I heard the padding of feet as she left. I had to get a letter out right now. This guy was not about to wake up, that much was clear. My flowers were wilting a little again.

I waited all of five minutes outside of the house before the shaymin returned with a pokemon in tow. "You needed something written again?" the combusken asked irritably. I mentally sighed at the way he was to treat me. How troublesome.

"Big trouble" I told him, making him snap to attention. He always wanted to fix a problem, no matter how irritable he was in the process. He took the paper he kept. None of the shaymin could write, obviously, considering out tiny, only slightly versatile paws. He was the only resident of the village who could write at all.

"What do you need?" he asked, pulling out the writing utensil as well and prepared to write. it's a good thing he's fast at writing. "Dear Wigglytuff… For the past two days, the pokemon you have been searching for has been within shaymin village. He has put himself to sleep using the ghost energy of his badge for the past two days, and has not eaten. I personally will seek out Drowzee to find out what the problem is, but please send people to check on him. Come immediately" I said, finishing. Combusken's attitude changed as he finished.

"Whoah… This is serious stuff" he muttered, putting a final period on the letter. I nodded. "Put that in a letter as soon as you can and send it on your way. Have the shaymin call down the first pelipper they see. I need to get Drowzee immediately, or this guy's in trouble". I waited for him to nod before I began to leave.

"Oh, and **please **get a project started to build a mailbox" I added, walking out of the room. I did not wait for an answer. With another link to my gracidea, I transformed into a sky forme shaymin. I proceeded to soar away.

_I have time. I'm not too late. _

**⽊Servine's POV⽊**

I leaned back on a tree. I had been doing so for about two hours. There are so many rescue teams around right now, because the ones coming from other places are taking jobs as well, that the boards were completely empty. So, todays job was to stand around looking bored.

_Nothing to do today…_

The tangela were off having fun with the other younger rescue teams, running about with them and the like. Lots of laughter from my childish teammates. As for me, I was not willing to be a part of the fun. Why was that? Because I tried to grow up. What I had learned from Caleb was: Growing up is not good for you.

_So bored…_

Caleb had grown up, far more than anybody else would. He had seen terrible things. His world was a place where if you did not grow up, you got messed up. When he had been confused, I initially believed he was just telling scary stories. Casualty counts. What a terrifying thought.

"Sooooo bored…" I finally groaned to nobody in particular. Nobody heard me. My head bonked against the tree as I tried not to scream from sheer boredom. It has been so long since I had a day without a mission, and I just forgot how boring it was. Passing time thinking of Caleb got me on the topic of horror stories, so I avoided that.

I viewed the tree above me. Sparse leaves, medium branches. Now it was time to try something. I set up two vines on the branches, and tried to slingshot myself up.

_Ohhhhhh, dear…_

I had flown way higher than I had wanted to, in fact I had misjudged my launch, and was going to plummet to an extremely painful landing. I was in bird territory at the moment. Even a pidgey was fluttering past, giving me a strange look as my upward movement ceased.

I was not in range of anything to grab with vines. At least not in any way that can help. I was in major trouble. So was anyone beneath me, because I was about to create a crater in the ground below and pass out. It's a shame I never learned any attacks to knock myself back.

_I deserve this. My fault. My punishment. Face, meet ground. Violently. _

As I began my quick descent towards the ground, when I heard a whistling sound. Suddenly, I was moving very fast in a different direction, rocketing towards the ground at mach speed. Something had hit me, and it was **carrying **me.

Embarrassment rose as I realized what it was, as it set me down I did not even wat to turn around to see my flying savior. "Hehe… Hey Staraptor…" I said. The female solo explorer ruffled her feathers behind me. "And what exactly were you doing in the **sky**?" she asked. I shook my head.

"Trying something new… Slingshot…"

She sighed. "This is new for you. Reckless. What changed?"

"Oh… Lots of things".

"Care to explain?"

"No"

"Very well. If you're gonna give me someone to save, at least make it a challenge for me" the bird pokemon huffed. " turned my head to look at her crossly. Then, I realized how bratty I was being. She was doing the same. Staraptor tended to mimic the personalities of those she was talking to.

"I apologize, Staraptor. Thank you for saving me from creating a crater in the ground" I said, turning to face the large bird. She started, seemingly confused at my change of attitude. She just tilted her head and stared her bird stare at me.

Finally, after about a minute of silence. I nodded and walked away, trying to find something to do. I had acted poorly towards Staraptor at first, but what surprised me is: I noticed. I had actually noticed how I was acting, and realized it was not good.

Caleb had done that for me. He had taught me how to realize what was wrong with a situation, and act accordingly. He had given so much, and he had only wanted to go home. Every one of us who had met him owed him a debt at this point. Mightyena had dropped his hostile personality. I could now realize when something was wrong. Nincada no longer lived alone. Jake was not the only human around. Sarah… She had found someone to love. In fact, she was obsessed to the point of stopping him.

_Would he have been able to leave if we were not there?_

The truth was that none of us knew exactly why Caleb could not make himself leave. If it was just us, he may have been able to get home anyways right? The more I thought about it, the more I was certain: We were not the sole cause of his wanting to stay. '

_I wonder how he really feels about Sarah…_

Sarah. What a confusing question. He acted so hostile, but he was doing so to prevent pokemon from creating friendships with him. He did it to protect us. but what I was focusing on was how particularly hostile he was towards Sarah, who was basically a lost cause in Caleb's goals. Did that mean he was particularly willing to keep her from feeling pain?

_Or is he angry that he knows things will not go well there?_

I tossed that thought aside. Caleb never grew truly angry. There was a sense of shame in his eyes whenever he lashed out. He never wanted to hurt anybody, characterized by how hesitant he was to fight even in mystery dungeons.

Then I remembered how he had said anyone could change. Even him. He was so specific about how he could change as well. He clearly understood the minds of pokemon, though he was likely talking rather about humans. However, our actions have met his ideas of the mind. Pokemon must be somewhat similar to humans at least, and he was one. He would know.

So would he have changed after all that happened to him? What kind of person is he now? He had looked so utterly destroyed inside when I had unfortunately caught a glimpse of his eyes. The shattered look in them sometimes appeared in my sleep. He could be in any shape at all.

_So who will he be?_

I thought about it for a good long while, having leaned against another tree, this time without others to see me. Mightyena had mentioned Caleb having to fight new instincts. Each pokemon has them. Some species even have a tendency to have similar thought processes as a collective group. Maybe absols are one such group. However, Sarah is completely different from the other absols, and Caleb was human.

Would Caleb be angry? At whom would he be angry? The truth was I had no idea, but I did know that trying to find Caleb before he shows up on his own is likely not to be a good idea. Sarah should not be going after him, but it was clear that her patience was wearing thin. I knew that because the one time i've actually seen her since the event was her pacing about outside in some isolated place that I happen to use as an isolated place, muttering to herself.

I realized that I was now doubting the most trustworthy person I knew, and I tried to shove it aside. Why did I feel such danger? I was not an absol. This was nothing but paranoia.

_Right?_

**⻤Nincada's POV⻤**

Our job today had been simple as anything we had ever seen before. We were sent to a large dangerous dungeon in search of a lost magmar. It turned out that he had gotten out on his own. Later, his brother had wanted to give us the reward anyways, but Sarah told him that it was all right. In fact, she insisted on it. I guess she had money to spare anyways…

Sarah was doing her pacing thing again, and she seemed to be doing it more often now. She would probably do so for a long time if Caleb never showed up. She might be like that for months, and knowing how attached she was, maybe even years. She was so stubborn.

So It was near eleven in the morning. We were jobless at the moment, I decided that Sarah would not care at all if I just dug away from the guild. So I did. Outside, the sun was incredibly bright at this point, it nearing the summer months. Kid pokemon were running rampant around treasure town, and thankfully the gossipy bug team had been asked to avoid areas where they were playing. At least the noise was at a normal pitch now.

A starly raced a taillow and another bird pokemon I did not recognise, looping around some trees. The taillow was winning by a long shot, lapping his friends repeatedly. Even their chatter was clearly in good nature. So much joy as fourteen continents gather for this event. So many pokemon this time.

After asking around a bit, I discovered that there seemed to be almost as much pokemon here as the last tournament, and more kept coming with no sign of slowing down yet. Some pokemon have a lot of kids at once, I know, particularly several bug types. There certainly seemed to be plenty of those types around today.

There were scuffles as well. The younger pokemon were doing so playfully, some older ones sparring with vigor in an attempt to become stronger for this tournament. I saw several battles. None of the massive and dangerous pokemon were around, probably training where they could blow up whatever they wanted without repercussions.

Despite the many battles going around, it felt normal. This was what was supposed to happen every ten years at this point. I assumed that this was absolutely normal. Everyone seemed to think it was anyways. I needed to do some training as well. May as well do so today.

I was not travelling anywhere fast, and I had to find a way to practice my moves without damaging anything important as well. X-scissor and dig needed some power, and I had to practice my swords dance to make it go faster. Speed makes every difference in battle, and I am not fast.

There was an odd group ahead of me. They seemed the type I wanted to avoid. I decided to travel underground. Occasionally, you would find pokemon like that. Somebody you just knew you had to avoid, like they had some sort of angry aura. Something that meant they would do **something** to you, either stealing or attacking or just messing with you. Other pokemon gave them a wide berth. I did too.

Digging about, I tried to detail the surroundings up top. Sometimes things were easy to see the vibrations of. A large spiky pokemon pounded the ground as he walked, making everything clear by vibrations. Other times, there were small pokemon everywhere, and my knowledge of what was going on was very limited.

I needed to improve my senses. I decided that I had to get to the quietest area in the town, and figure out how I could see what was going on. So, I traveled over to the most quiet spot I could find, and tried to 'see' what was around me. Nothing.

I tried to make my own vibrations, but my claws did not make enough of an impact in the dirt to make proper vibrations. Using swords dance just to do so would be a waste of time and energy. I focused, but I could not feel anything.

I tried a different tactic: Relaxing completely. Sarah had told Caleb to do so when they were talking about that absol sense they have. Instantly, something shattered my calm. I felt a vibration, but I lost it immediately. I could not pinpoint it's location either. What had caused it?

So I could get a huge jolt if I was absolutely calm, but that calm disappeared in an instant one something catches my attention. It had been slightly better than trying to sense stuff, but basically pointless because I did not even know what caused it.

_Darn it all. I guess Sarah will just have to tell me what's up. or Caleb if he comes back. _

It was a mistake to think Caleb's name. Such trouble we put him through, and now everything he had is gone. Literally everything he ever had as a human. his life, whatever he owned. It was just terrible for him, and as a collective group, we were at fault. I was not so unhappy at Sarah anymore, anyways. Things had to simmer down, or things would go back to the way they used to be before Caleb showed up.

i sighed and shook my head. I needed to get back to training. Something different though.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Pacing all day was actually taking a toll on my legs at this point. maybe I should stop, but I could not. I knew why. Caleb. I was so much of an emotional freak at this point.

_I'm so clingy! I can't even change that!_

Earlier today, despite having gotten that letter sent out to the region about Caleb, I tried to calm myself, to tell myself to let Caleb go, but it was like my very mind was resisting me. What was up with that? I get that Caleb had been the only one to treat me like I was normal since, well, ever, but why could I not let him go?

Thinking about that was useless too. Maybe if I found somebody else that was like Caleb… But there wasn't anybody like that. Caleb was just everything I imagined someone I could love would be. Strong, smart, kind, an absol… He pretended to be angry with me all the time. He closed himself off. Maybe the reason I loved being around him is because I saw right through him. I always knew exactly what he was thinking.

That connection, it made me very attached to him. What I wanted to know was why I could understand him so well. Why I loved him. Maybe not even Caleb could tell me.

_Am I just more like a human than an absol in the way of personality?_

Caleb was so closed off about it, except for when he had been confused and talked about bloody wars. Humans got involved in such wars. Did I just… Understand them? Was I the way other humans were?

I needed to ask Caleb. The only way I could get an answer was him. Another thing I like about him: he always had an answer. The other human had lost his memory. Jake would be no help. Neither would anybody else. I would be somewhat conflicted until I talked to Caleb. I knew I could not let go of him.

_If Caleb was in danger..._

I shook my head. Nothing was dangerous in this world, not really. The only time anybody has come close to dying before their time… I had almost been killed. Our whole group had been nearly killed. First by Mightyena, who was not in control over himself. Then, Caleb had flown into a rage when he thought I had died, and the same energy had infected him. We had all nearly died fighting the beast that had been Caleb. I had saved him.

That whole thing was encouraging to me. He had been so angry when he thought I had died. He had to care for me right? The darkness had been defeated by the crystal I held, charged with pure emotion in energy form. How such a thing was possible… I did not know. The point was, Caleb had to care for me, right?

I knew I was overthinking things. I always overthought things. It was what I did. That and being emotional, particularly when I had heard someone's dying heartbeat.

The topic allowed me to think about something else. The other absol that had been at least kind to me, though he was always glancing at my color. The older absol eventually began dying of old age. The old guy had told me all about whatever I wanted to know, and it was only in his final moments that he had told me the kind of sense I was good at. A dying heartbeat is the most pure form of danger, and the most emotional.

I had been reduced to an absolute wreck by the time he had died. He had told me that I should not have had to discover this before I had turned at least thirty. I had been eleven. My sobs had brought the attention of others, who had found me there. There were those who were sympathetic of course, but every one of them was looking at the color of my fur and skin more than the emotions on my face.

Every last one of them thought I was some sort of freak. Except for Caleb. He had been kind, generous. He had been supportive, right until I had gotten too pushy. Even his hostility, an act, was devised to protect me from the pain of losing him. Completely selfless. He cared nothing about himself, and I even think he despises himself.

He just did not understand that he was worth something as well as the rest of us, that his opinions and wants matter. He wanted us to be happy, but I would bet that if anyone asked him what **he **wanted, his response would be "It does not matter what I want". That was completely wrong. Everyone wanted him around, and anyone would want to know his opinion. He felt that he was alone. Maybe he used to be in the human world.

With that depressing thought, I finally decided to pace in a different spot instead of the place that several kids were running about playing. I did not want to run one over pacing about so obliviously.

I began to travel towards the guild, when I saw a pelipper. The messenger birds, apparently. They could carry a few hundred letters in their mouths, and rumor has it that they have never messed up a delivery. It was going towards the guild.

My pace quickened from a walk to a trot. This was the daily delivery of letters, notes and jobs. If there was a response in there, it would be the only response today. The pelipper landed on the grate and gained access. I raced to be next in line, shifting from side to side.

"What, are you doing a dance, or are you just impatient?" Diglett's voice came up at me, prompting me to hold still for a grand total of ten seconds. I was cleared to go, and practically leaped into the guild, almost tumbled down the ladder, barely managing to keep my footing on the ladder before dropping onto the ground of the first floor. The instant I landed, I ran to Chimecho.

"What is it, Sarah?" Chimecho asked "You manage to avoid blinding yourself today?"

"Yeah" I grinned, trying not to show too much of my fangs "I need a favor: Who manages the mail?"

"Why do you need to know that?" Chimecho asked, clearly suspicious. I gave her a surprised look. What, she did not give me the information within that instant? "I need to know. I'm expecting a letter".

"If you were to get a letter, you should receive it directly from Pelipper. Otherwise, the only mailbox is in the guildmaster's room".

Chimecho went to say more, but I was gone in an instant. Racing down the ladder, something I was slightly better at now that I had done it a few times and managed not to injure myself in the process. I sprinted straight towards the guildmaster's room, with it's closed doors. Without thinking, I barged in immediately.

Three heads turned towards me. Wigglytuff, who waved like we were old friends and I did this every day. I had visited him often enough I guess. Pelipper, who seemed annoyed to be distracted, and Chatot, who looked like he was considering giving me a severe toung lashing.

_Whoops. Can't talk now. Back to business. _

"Hey Wigglytuff!" I called to the guildmaster "Anything yet?"

Chatot immediately sighed. "Sarah, it's been less than twelve hours… Did you actually expect to get a response within half a day?" he asked incredulously. Oops.

_He's right. Another day of pacing for me. _

Suddenly, a loud **squawk! **drew our attention, seeing the guildmaster rummaging** inside Pelipper's mouth**. The poor bird flapped frantically to stay aloft with the heavy guildmaster searching through the letters within.

"Guildmaster!" Chatot squawked "What are you **doing**?!" I agreed, though I was dying trying to hold in laughter. It was hilarious. Wigglytuff was tossing out the occasional letter, with Chatot trying desperately trying to stop him, trying to say sorry to the poor pelipper and straining to explain how little chance there was of getting a return letter so soon. How did this birdbrain find out about that anyways?

"Got it!" Wigglytuff said triumphantly, releasing the pokemon in his grasp who quickly swooped around, snatched up any letters strewn about, and fled the room as fast as possible. Chatot was flapping frantically still, looking absolutely flabberghasted. A chuckle escaped me, causing the bird pokemon to glare at me, anger evident in his eyes. That actually amused me more, but I managed to avoid causing a problem.

Wigglytuff was suddenly in front of me, having lumbered up with me distracted. Chatot chirped out a few bird-specific insults I did not understand and fluttered over to where he would normally rest. I had destroyed his ability to act like a responsible leader temporarily.

He waved a letter in front of me. It was sealed with a flower sticker. "Where's it from?" I asked, looking dumbly at the letter instead of thinking about it. Wigglytuff looked at it, and then at me again. He showed me it, as if I had missed something.

"Why, it's a letter from shaymin village!" he said. I instantly made the flower connection. I guess I was rather dense for not making the connection earlier. Then, something caught my attention. The letter had absolutely no other marks on it. "How do you know it's the letter for m-... Us?"

"Oh, I just know these things, friend!" he said cheerfully, finding a clunky way to dodge the question. "Open it up!"

I did, splitting the flower seal with a claw and opening it up. There was a letter written in **very **hastily written words. What could leave them in such a hurry, and how the heck did those shaymin ever write something? Their paws were smaller and almost as useless for writing as an absol's. We had pads with claws coming out from them. More than useless for writing.

I began to read the letter. "Dear Wigglytuff… For the past two days, the pokemon you have been searching for has been within shaymin village. He has put himself to sleep using the ghost energy of his badge for the past two days, and has not eaten. I personally will seek out Drowzee to find out what the problem is, but please send people to check on him. Come immediately". I looked at it uncomprehensively.

First, I felt elated. They had found Caleb within the day I had sent this letter. I could talk to him once more. If he would not come back, I could at least learn what I needed to and try, at least try to leave it at that.

Then, an unsettling feeling of dread washed over me.

_Asleep?!_

"Wigglytuff, I think this is saying Caleb's been using the ghost energy in his badge for two whole days". He nodded, and then something else clicked in my mind. "He's not eating or drinking doing that! What is he thinking?!"

"I do not know, friend" Wigglytuff said, surprisingly gentle. I looked at him. "What matters is that whoever sent this has requested that someone go to him". I stared at him in wonder. Was Wigglytuff giving me permission to go? Just like that? "I can do this?" I asked uncertainly. he giggled and patted me on the head. "Of course, friend!"

Pretending he had not just patted me on the head like I was a kid or something, I nodded, and thanked him. Chatot sighed heavily, though I could tell somehow that it was in no way exaggerated. He was really **that **annoyed and/or disappointed.

I felt like actually hugging the big guy, but he probably would have accidentally crushed me.

_Save the hugging for Caleb. _

That brought a smile to my face. I would see him again. I rushed out of there faster than I ever have before, bursting through the doors and promptly running into the ever-nosy Nincada, who had clearly been listening at the door.

He was holding a paper. A job, I realized. "Uh, actually we can't. Well,.. You know…"

"This is a solo mission to the amp plains. We need to get halfway through the dungeon. It's close enough to be completed by the end of the day because it's noon".

"Nincada, you know what's going on! We can't go on a mission now!"

Nincada gave me a look that told me I missed something important. I waited for him to say something, despite how I needed to get to Sky Peak **right now**. "Perhaps you missed the 'solo' part of the description" he said slightly cryptically. I stared stupidly at him for about five seconds, causing him to sigh.

"You do whatever you want in the meantime" he said, causing something to click in my mind. Suddenly, I realized what he meant. "Thank you, Nincada!" I exclaimed. I did not stop to wait for him to reply. I stuffed the letter away in my bag and bolted.

I needed to get to the mountain right now. There was only one way to make it in a day, the same kind of time it took me last time. I needed to talk to Mightyena. Something bugged me about that, asking him for another favor, and he would likely not let me have a speed band. For that reason, I had to be quick blunt, and he needed the letter.

**⽛Mightyena's POV⽛**

Having practiced intense strategies all morning, I had decided to take a nap in the house. The dark welcomed me, me being a dark type, I can see better in the dark than other types. There were the water sphere lights, but they always seemed to be dimmer when we needed them to be. I guess they are enchanted or something. I had woken about an hour ago, though I was content just to lie there.

That was, until a very persistent and somewhat annoying absol showed up in my room. I sighed deeply. "Hello, Sarah…" I muttered unwilling to talk about anything. I waited for Sarah to pester me, probably about finding Caleb or something.

What she did next was unlike Sarah. No fuss, she just started talking. She yanked out a piece of paper first. "Caleb. Trouble. Read first. No time. Need speed band. Give me it. Now". I stared at her, completely confused. She gave me an 'are you an idiot?!' look, with her head tilted a bit, and shoved the paper at me. "Read. Get speed band. Give me it".

Finally, I decided to read the stupid thing. She apparently wanted to use my speed band again. I unfolded what I thought was some stupid letter. A letter it was, but it's contents made my eyes go wide. "Two consecutive days!?" I demanded as I read. Caleb was not eating or drinking for some reason. Whatever could make him do that was dangerous. It said to send somebody. Sarah thought she was that person.

I contemplated it for a moment, Sarah shifting very restlessly. I should be the one going… Caleb would probably talk to me. Probably. Would he talk to Sarah? I realized that even though Sarah was the root cause of this, it was possible that Caleb would not hold her specifically responsible. What could we do anyways? We could not wake him up with that ghostly energy keeping him asleep. The only way to talk to him would be to enter his dreams.

Sarah wanted to go. Caleb had left, and that was his decision. It was not my place to question that decision. I sighed again. Sarah had no sense of respect for him. I did. That was why I would not keep Sarah here and go myself. However, Caleb was not eating or drinking, and that was a mistake.

"Yeah" I simply said, walking over to one of our personal storage chests and bringing out the ugly pink band. "Take it. Take it and go to him".

Her eyes shone brilliantly. "Thank you, Mightyena!" I waited for her to grab it before saying "Caleb may not want to talk to you. You know that, right?"

Her eyes lost their shine and the happiness became sorrow. "I have to try" she muttered, surprisingly firm for her state.

Then, she sprinted away to save her beloved Caleb.

**⾚Riley's POV⾚**

I sat in an armchair in the living room of the house. I was seething quietly, as I had done whenever the two kid absols were sleeping. It was about midnight at this point. I knew that the day was reversed here because of Caleb's sleep schedule.

Speaking of, Caleb was taking time to think. A lot of time to think. He just cut himself off two from us two days ago, and none of us three have seen him since. I have forbidden the kids from looking for him, because the last thing he said before sealing himself up there was 'don't bother me'. Caleb was more respectful than that normally.

I had seen the look in his eyes. He looked destroyed. His eyes looked like shattered glass. No coherent thoughts beyond sorrow and a little rage. The worst part was, I knew why. He had his chance to get home, and he had blown it. The reason I knew that? Because Caleb had been radiating a powerful aura as he entered the dream. Memories displayed themselves of what had happened, and that was all he thought about.

I knew who was responsible for this, ultimately to blame. If she ever found a way into this dream, she would be sorry she ever did this to my friend. It was unlikely that she would ever come across this place, but if she did…

A grim smile appeared on my face at the thought of getting revenge for my friend. She would be in a world of hurt if she ever set paw in this world. I could only do what I did best, protecting this world, and she was definitely a threat. I had an excuse as well.

Knowing that I could do something only if she showed up somehow, I decided to try and calm myself. I did not need sleep, but I needed to chill out a bit. So, I grabbed a few books from the bookshelf that Caleb had placed there. Three books, the first being the lengthier and more adult version of 'Wizard Island' that Caleb had made for me. It was more violent than the kid's version anyways. The other two were called 'The Sealed Warrior' and 'Dark Star'. Good books.

Even as I began to read them, a certain thought was prevalent in my mind constantly.

_Finding yourself in this dream would be the biggest mistake you ever made, Sarah._

* * *

**You all might have noticed that the chapters are starting to get shorter now, this one being closer to 8000 than 10000. This is because i was trying to find ways to make them longer before realizing that it would have been adding pointless filler that would put you guys to sleep.**

**Jango's under house arrest at the moment, if you were wondering why he did not greet you at first. The TV downstairs is broken something awful, and he is most certainly to blame. He even admitted it, though he has taken credit for things that he has not done since arriving here... Either way, he had audibly cursed as it was audibly broken, so it's pretty much cut and dried. I'll have to fix it later i suppose. **

**Right then. This chapter was necessary for the plot to advance, but i promise, i PROMISE that things will begin to get exiting soon. Very soon. **

**Please review. If you are enjoying this story, and want to receive email notifications for this story, feel free to follow the story. Character bios are still being accepted. Form below. Please, i have few submissions at this point. I CAN make up a bunch of teams for the tournament, but i think it would be better to include as many teams as my viewers want me to. **

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	28. Chapter Twenty Eight: Riley

**Jango: Hey, guys! Jango here. In return for fixing the TV, i seem to have been released from the solitary confinement that was my new room since i showed up. I just can't miss Hyper falling for my little trap. It's all set up now. To be completely fair, it's probably entirely valid to contain me in a room with minimal things to break, considering who i am. Shhhh... He's coming along now. This should be awesome. **

***CRASH!***

**Hyperjade (in the distance): Gah! What's goi-**

***CRASH!***

**Hyperjade: Owwwww... Wha... What is- JANGO!**

**Jango: Oh dear, seems I've been found out. Rather obvious in hindsight. Not like i'll be stopped from talking right now. Part two's coming along about... Now. **

***KRSSSSSHHH***

**Jango: Aaand he should be unconscious by now. Haha, it's funny because he actually fell for it, the poor guy. Anyways, it looks like i'll actually be telling this chapter for the most part until he wakes up and slams me into my room. I deserve it after all. Couldn't help myself. **

***BOOOOOOM...***

**Jango: Uh... There was no part three... Uhhh, hang on, i'm going to make sure that nothing else happened. Read the chapter, and the like. Hope i didn't actually kill him... Caleb would be all over me when i returned... Hang on, Hyper. I'm coming. Please don't be, you know, dead. **

* * *

**Chapter 28: Riley**

**Sarah's POV **

I charged through the fields faster even than when I had chased Caleb down when he was going home. Maybe the magic in this useful (yet ugly) band knew just how serious this was. The grass whipped behind me as I whizzed past every blade. I was blazing a trail with my claws severing several grass blades per step.

I barely noticed these things, mostly because Caleb was certainly in danger. I needed to get to sky peak **now**. My paws pounded the grass as trees came into view.

_What will he say to me? He really might say anything, but I know him too well. I just have to think about it. He could say 'Why did you come? I want to be alone'. He also could say 'I don't belong here'. _

I then took into account recent events. Would he say something else? Would he basically say 'leave me alone'? That would not be an acceptable answer. He would starve if he managed to keep himself asleep for a week, worst case scenario. He had to wake up immediately, get some breakfast, and promise never to do something so stupid ever again.

I looked at the sun as I ran. It would be setting when I got there. I could move no faster than I was right now. I willed my speed band to go faster, but it would not. This thing sure was handy though. It basically had no faults except for the increased effort, not to mention it being the ugliest shade of pink in history.

Seriously, what was the deal with that? What, the person who invented these things basically said: 'You will have speed to rival that of an aerodactyl, but you will be wearing the worst accessory of all time, in a color that literally clashes with everything. Yeah, I think that's a good trade'. Maybe it was. I certainly hated the thing on me. It was pink, but the worst sort of pink that somehow clashed with my pink fur, even though they are such a similar color.

Either way, it was about to save Caleb. I decided to forgive it's maker's terrible fashion sense.

_The wind is pushing against me. Stupid wind…_

It would not impede my progress much. I only hoped that there was a way to get to Caleb. He was asleep after all, with no way of waking him without his own decision. I would have to talk to him in his dreams. How would I do that? I had not planned anything, but I would just have to try. I could only try.

_Or I could have been smarter and figured out what to do with a sleeping absol that won't wake up That would have been smart. _

_Enough of the self loathing, me. _

And now I was talking to myself. Actually addressing myself. It seemed common enough in times of stress. At least for me. Caleb could actually starve doing what he was doing, so stupidly doing. I was **really **stressed out about that. I wanted to get him back immediately.

I wondered at why he was doing this. He knew he needed food. He knew that he would starve if he slept permanently. He was smarter than that. Why would he do this is he knew what his probable limits were?

It confused me to no end. My Caleb, he proved to be really smart, and there was no way he could possibly be in his right mind. My Caleb, he was a genius even. I had watched him think his way out of more situations than fight out of them. He had tricks hidden somewhere in that armor of his, snapping Servine out of her shock with a simple few words. He had literally talked Mightyena out of his mad personality within a few minutes.

I almost ran into a tree in my distraction, and probably would have if this band did not do most of the running. I found myself jumping over a small crevice next, one I had not seen at all.

_Ugliest scarf of all time saves time and well being. _

Scarves don't even look good on me anyways. Maybe if there was one that was red or something. Red is better than pink.

_I am pink as well as red…_

Except that I was talking about the band I wore. I would get the dumb thing off of me the instant I had the chance, when I got to Caleb. I just hoped that I would not collapse in sudden exhaustion when I took it off.

So time passed with me thinking things that either led nowhere or focused on Caleb. Trees blurred by. I jumped over a boulder with impressive speed, and since the thing was about fifteen times my size, the jump was impressive. After that, it was a dense, yet tiny forest that I somehow weaved through.

Eventually, I reached the mountains. Instead of weaving around the paths, I sprinted over the hills. After an hour, a real scare appeared. A mountain that consisted mostly of broken cliffs , and I was making a beedrill-line straight for the edge of it.

It turned out, my surprise and fear was unnecessary. I found myself practically dancing up the cliffs, finding impossible pawholds and somehow not flying off of the cliff and plummeting towards the unforgiving ground. Somehow, I scaled the practically vertical cliff. It felt awesome.

_Amazing thing, this ugly band. _

A shame it sucked up your energy and messed with your vision.

Many of the other mountains had little in the way of massive cliffs, and thankfully I never jumped off of any or ended up running straight up a cliff. Eventually, way too slowly, the mountain that contained Shaymin Village appeared in front of me. The sun was beginning to set.

I growled, wincing at how high pitched my growl was. It did not really count as a growl. I needed to get to the top of the mountain **right now**.

My paws pounded the ground, the pounding becoming apparent as I hit more rocks on the ground. As I practically flew towards the gate, that was just appearing in the distance, I had another thought.

_What am I actually able to do for Caleb?_

I shook that off. I would find a way. I darted into the village, almost ran over ten small grass types, and skidded to a stop, trying to rip my band off in the process. I left an impressive ten foot skid mark, and something bad happened. My band caught on my horn. I immediately cursed my species itself, trying to get it off. my vision was messed up, and my legs kept trying to move, though I was slowing down.

"Stop stop stop stop stop!" I muttered as I finally ripped the horrible thing off of my horn. My vision snapped to focus, hurting my eyes, and I promptly collapsed. Voices floated over to me.

"Goodness! It's that absol!"

"Look what she did to our flowers!"

"Sage won't be too happy with her. Is she who he wanted to come?"

"He said he just wrote 'send someone'. Rather, Combusken did".

"Sage should be back soon, else we'll have to wait until morning".

That last bit shocked me to my feet in an instant. "What!?" I shouted, bolting to me feet, causing the poor shaymin to jump back. "Caleb needs help, and we have to wait!? Where is he?!"

They backed away a bit, but one small kid hesitantly pointed over in a direction. I whipped my head around to see Caleb in a small house, curled up with his eyes closed. A ghostly black aura swirled around him. "Caleb!" I yelled charging to get to him. I barely registered one of the pokemon muttering "grab her speed band for her. She'll forget it".

_I'll forget what? Never mind. _

I nudged his sleeping form. I was used to seeing a uncharacteristically broad smile on his face when he slept, but this… This was a scowl. His dreams must not be going so well. "Come on, Caleb!" I said to him, nudging his side "Wake up!"

He did not stir. I had not seen him curled up like this before either. Normally, he just slept on his side, normally accidentally on his right side and impaling his horn into the ground. I smiled at the memory. "Come on, you" I said, getting closer "wake up, sleepyhead".

The shaymin behind me seemed confused by my actions. I guess I was actually indulging myself. Just being anywhere near him at all eased all of my worries. He was right here. I could talk to him, if that darned 'Sage' person ever showed up. I noted the jabberings of the others behind me.

"What is she doing?"

"She's weird…"

"She's so frantic…"

And then, a slightly deeper voice called out behind me. "I'm sure she is simply worried". This was followed by an intense squealing of somebody else. "Let be down already! I don't want to fall!"

"Calm yourself" the deeper voice commanded "You're only two feet from the ground". I turned to see an incredibly amusing sight, that is if the situation was not so stressful. A strange pokemon with the same colors of a shaymin was floating about three feet in the air, and an even stranger pokemon, this one yellow and brown with a freaky nose was struggling to keep his grip on the first pokemon's front legs.

Frowning down at the struggling whatever-it-was, he shook the poor thing off. As it fell to the floor, it gave a final gasp before apparently realizing he was safe. Sage looked at the setting sun, noting that it was almost fully down, and glided over to me. As he landed, he glowed and changed. Standing in front of me was a shaymin. I guess they can fly or something. I did not really care.

"Hello" he said simply. I looked at Caleb, and then back at him. "No time for chatting" I said harshly. He blinked, and I continued. "The best guy i've ever known, **ever**, has placed himself in a sleep and has not woken up to even eat of drink. I'm thinking he may not even want to". He seemed taken aback by my lack of formality, but I was beyond that. Caleb was starving himself, and this guy wanted to talk.

"Hmm… As you can see, I brought Drowzee here" he said, gesturing towards the yellow pokemon. Drowzee looked up quickly, and he hesitated before coming up to us. "What was it that you needed?" he asked, trying to keep the shaking out of his voice. I pointed towards Caleb.

"Oh, yeah! The guy you told me about" he said, making me want to smack him. This was serious! The ridiculous looking pokemon wandered over to Caleb, putting his hand over Caleb's head. "He's in deep" the guy muttered.

"Meaning?" I asked. He looked up at me, seeming apprehensive. I guess I was being somewhat intimidating. Nobody forgets to take the color pink seriously as long as Wigglytuff is around.

"I-I mean that he's not coming out with outside efforts" he stammered, causing me to frown at him. "Meaning?"

"That i'll have to enter his dreams, or more accurately, send someone else in" he said. This was startling. "You can do that?"

"Yes".

"Then what are you wasting time for?! Get me in there, quick!" I practically shouted, moving closer to Caleb. He stepped away from me, looking really worried. "Uh, Shouldn't Sage be doing it?" he questioned, causing the shaymin to sigh. I went up to him and glared daggers at him, and then decided to prove my point.

"Get".

**Smack**

"Me".

**Smack**

"Into".

**Smack**

"My".

**Smack**

"Boyfriend's".

**Smack**

"Dream".

**Smack **

"Now".

"Enough!" the shaymin, apparently called Sage, suddenly said sternly, halting my doubleslap on Drowzee. "I understand that you are stressed, but please be patient. Please" he pleaded. I was about to retort, but I did realize how rash I was being.

"Owwwww…" Drowzee whimpered, causing me to realize that I was not helping. "I-I'm sorry" I muttered. Drowzee was skeptical, but Sage sighed again, like we were bickering children. Maybe we were. "Drowzee, please do as she asks. Tell her whatever you can and send her in. Please".

"Alright, but only to get this crazy absol away from me" the insufferable yellow pokemon muttered. "Right. There's some things to remember here. You will not fall asleep. You are physically entering the dream, meaning you can get hurt there. Especially if it's a nightmare. For some reason, I can't tell what he is dreaming about. Be extra careful.

I nodded. This was actually important now. He continued. "I cannot keep tabs on you while you are in the dream. If you need to leave, specifically if you get hurt, I will keep the way out open for you. Just find it again. In no way will I be able to speak to you. Normally, I would be able to do at least that, but he is a dark type. It will take all of my energy to get you in there at all".

That was it for the lesson on dream travelling. He moved closer to Caleb. "Please touch his head" he instructed me, and I gladly did so. "Right then…" he muttered as if he was unsure of himself. "Off you go, then".

Suddenly, everything went white except for Caleb, the only thing I could see properly. I found myself thinking I was flying towards him, him getting bigger in my vision as if I was physically entering his mind. Once I was close enough, there was another flash and I fell about ten feet onto a bunch of… Sticks?

_The buffoon didn't even have the decency to make the entrance at ground level._

I opened my eyes, not having realized they were closed. Around me was a forest. A beautiful forest. The sun was still setting… No wait, it was wrong somehow. I looked at it through the tree's wondering what was up before it clicked. The sun was **rising**, not setting. That actually made sense to me, if time was switched here. Not that I doubted that it would be less nice at night.

I stood, ignoring the slight ache on my legs from the landing and my sprint here. I was surprised that I was in better shape than I should be at all. Even so, I made my way through the pretty place. The trees were unlike anything I have seen. They were tall, and most of the leaves and branches were high up. The morning sun filtered through the forest and making everything several shades of brown or green.

It was an amazingly detailed dream. No wonder, it was in Caleb's head. I wandered aimlessly, no real destination in mind. What, would I just see him sitting around somewhere in this forest?

Fifteen minutes later, a break in the trees was visible. I cleared them to see the most beautiful place I have ever seen. A big, strange house of sorts sat atop a hill, overshadowed by a mountain. The forests around it were impressive, and I could see a meadow over to my left. What was freaky was the changing colors in the flowers, never the same color.

Something worried me though. Flashes of light came from the mountain, which had a scary red cloud over it. Freaky spikes of… Ice? Ice was stretching above it in some sort of crown of curved icicles. Maybe that was what was keeping Caleb here? Had some of that darkness survived? It was the only scary thing about this place. I shook my head, clearing the dark though away. I had extinguished that. Besides, that cloud was red, not black.

Something was clearly wrong with the mountain however. What I thought I might do is check out the two level house in front of me. It was the like that I have never seen before. It's windows were uniform, and square. It's door was wooden, and looked rather thin and light.

As I got closer, it began to loom above me. The door now seemed taller than many in our world. I saw lights on the outside of it. They were shaped oddly, and had strange glass structures in each one that were lit up. I wondered what they were. I prepared myself for what might be within. It could be a nightmare after all. I may have to battle it, take whatever it is down, and continue my search for Caleb.

As I neared the strange building, I realized that it could only be a human house. It was in Caleb's dream, and I had never seen it before. It was impressive, I can say that. On a rock that stood about seven feet high sat something I have never seen before.

It was clearly alive. It was reading a book. It's strange fur seemed loose around it, from what I could tell at my distance. It's face was hairless, and a tan color. It had only hair on the top of it's head, and that hair was a fierce orange color. It wore something on it's face, that looked a lot like blackglasses, that item that boosts dark type attacks. However, I could not see their shape clearly. The book's cover read: 'Dark Star'. An odd book title. At his waist hung three metal objects.

With a shock, I realized that with Caleb's description, this could only be one thing. A human. I was actually standing before a human. A shiver of hope flew down my spine as I thought that this might be Caleb. He could simply be in his human form. He had not noticed me yet.

"C-Caleb? Is that you?" I asked hopefully. I was ten feet from him now. The boy scowled, to my surprise. A similar scowl to the one Caleb was wearing in the real world, but this was slightly different. His book snapped shut, and he actually dropped it on the grass below.

Then, faster than I could follow, he planted his foot on the rook and **lunged**. I let out a slight shriek of surprise, before I could not see him. I looked to my left and then to my right. Where had he gone? Behind me, I heard the sound of metal against metal. I turned my head slowly to see the human above me, something in his hand, and he was swinging it. Hard.

**THWACK!**

The pain was incredible. I got a headache immediately from the strike. I was driven into the grass. With my eyes open and looking up, I saw the scowling human above me, ready to strike again. Before I could protest, he swung it low, caught me straight in the face, and sent me flying with impressive power. I was flipped straight into the rock that the boy had been sitting on.

_Ow…_

Caleb had told me that humans were basically weaklings. Who was this joker then? Maybe he is simply someone in the dream. A violent someone. He confirmed in a moment that he was not Caleb as I looked up.

I took the moment before he began speaking to finally give my opponent a proper look. His red hair practically glowed in the morning sun. His blackglasses were wider, in a strange shape and was actually a single piece of darkened glass. It turned his angry expression into more of a serious one. His fur was **weird**. It seemed to be in two layers on his upper half, a thinner layer on his chest that was loose enough, but his outer, thicker coat was hanging loosely. There was some metal in it, like rows of miniscule teeth that lined the part near it's opening. What on earth could that be for?

His fur below the waist was odd as well, appearing to be thicker than the first layer, it opened at the base to reveal things that definitely were not fur. Knots attached to them also seemed to hold them in place. unlike the rest of his fur, these things on his feet were white. The only other white on his shirt was the lightning pattern on the inner layer of fur. That layer was black otherwise, as was the lower layer of fur. His outer coat was blue and gray, with the metal lines being silver.

in his hand he held what he had smacked me into the rock with. It seemed to be a simple rod of metal, but it was white, and it was slightly thicker on the end he held. The way he held it was holding the thing against the ground, like a walking stick. It packed quite a punch, evidently. At his waist there were two more things that he could probably attack with as well.

"I am not Caleb" he practically snarled. reaching for my neck, grabbing my scruff, and holding me up to his face with his free hand. "Nor will you see him".

"And who are you?" I demanded "Are you what's keeping Caleb here? Have you done this to him, you nightmare!?" He scowled, and raised his metal rod. Tossing me, he whirled and smashed me in the side of the head. Hard.

I let out a yelp as I tumbled against the grass. The boy continued speaking. "The only nightmare here" he said "is you". I stared at him uncomprehensively. He hefted his weapon again. "As the guardian of this dream, I will take you apart" he promised "you are a danger to this world".

"Wait!" I said, jumping up "I need to talk to Caleb! Just let me see him!"

"You will never see him" the boy muttered, walking forward. I sensed major danger around him now. "I will not allow you to ruin him any further…" This guy was stubborn, but apparently he was guarding everything in this dream. "And what makes you think you can stop me?" I muttered.

He continued his advance. His scowl deepened. The weapon twirling between his fingers constantly. I tried something else. "What have I done?!"

It was a stupid question on my part, but it stalled the guy. He let out a strange growl in his throat, sounding less dangerous than Caleb's or Mightyena's, but the promise of destruction was still there. Suddenly he whirled his arm around and pointed his walking staff out towards the mountain. "You did **that**!" he snarled. I looked at the top of the mountain, covered in ice with a freaky red cloud above it. The cloud dropped a few red lightning bolts on the mountains.

"What do you mean I did that?!" I snarled right back. What he was saying made no sense. His eyes were hidden beneath those blackglasses, but I imagined he was glaring at me. 'You really are clueless aren't you?" he muttered, loud enough for me to hear "stupid enough to come here after what you did. You will never come in this house".

With that, he stepped between me and the door, and that is when I realized that something important was there. It was probably Caleb this guy was protecting. "Caleb is in danger" I said softly "And I **will** find him. I must get in there, and for that reason…"

I launced a flamethrower at the boy, powerful enough to hurt, but not enough to get to the house. The boy did not jump away, instead he put his stick in the way. I wondered what he was doing, but to my shock, his stick sucked away the flames and turned red.

_Uh oh…_

He spun and swung his weapon, releasing a blade of red energy straight at me, with the same exact sound effect that my razor wind makes.

**BOWWWWWWWWWW….**

I yelped as I threw myself to my left. The kid was keeping himself between me and the front door of that house. If Caleb was in there, I needed to get in as fast as possible. The guy was starving! I wondered if this guy attacking me had any sense of that, if he was a complete person.

_Then again, he certainly is angry with me. He has proper emotions, I can tell. _

He was angry with me because wherever Caleb was, what I caused has him still hurt, at least emotionally. Caleb was not doing well, and this guy, apparently the guardian of this dream, was angry about that. Very angry.

He walked towards me at a steady pace, his weapon ready to keep beating me until I was unconscious. Actually, knowing Caleb's horror stories of war. Would this guy try to kill me? I tensed, but as I built a flamethrower, I realized that he could just absorb it. It was like Caleb's old sword. I shuddered at that. There was only one question other than 'Where the hell is my future boyfriend'. "Who are you anyways?"

He kept walking unfortunately, though he began talking. "My name is Riley. My job is defending this place. I was based on Caleb's memory of a personal friend he had in his old world. Caleb wanted me to defend this place". He scowled even more, if possible. "Now his world is beyond his reach. This is your fault".

My eyes widened. His anger was definitely because of what I did to Caleb. "Caleb's going to starve if he sleeps for too long! You're telling me that you don't care!?" I shouted at him. He was very close now. "It is not my place to question Caleb" he muttered "not because of what you might think. I simply believe that after all the shit you put him through he deserves to have a choice in what he does with his life. He deserves at least that, and I don't care about my own life…"

Something was different. His voice had gone somewhat sad, but I could tell he believed every word. His own life did not matter, and he thought Caleb should choose his own future. What did he leave out? What is wrong?

Suddenly, he lunged. I was thinking too much, and did not see it coming. He whirled, slamming me into the ground painfully, and began to smash the staff into me with no abandon. The strikes rained down on me, but I focused on staying conscious. I had to fight Riley, even if I did not want to. I raised my head when I could and tried to fire a flamethrower.

Riley's speed amazed me. He impassively placed his weapon in the way and absorbed every flame. Then, he kicked me over so I was on my back, and jabbed the heavy end of the weapon right on my chest. My eyes widened before he fired.

**Boom!**

I did not move at all, because the blast went downward, but it hurt like hell. I yowled in pain, and when the flames cleared, my belly was charred, blackened. Riley landed on the ground about fifty feet away, thrown from the blast. He seemed unharmed mostly, but there were burn marks on the fur on his arms, and the rest of the coat had some burn marks as well.

He looked at the burns in distaste, and then, to my shock, he literally shrugged the outer layer of fur right off. I looked at it on the ground. He had taken off his fur. Somehow. Next, I noticed that his muscles were very defined. He looked very tough, and the fur from the lower layer only went barely past his shoulders.

_Humans can take off their fur? What?_

Riley put his finger to the center of his blackglasses and pushed them back to his nose. Then, he began to sprint towards me. This time, I rushed to meet him. He suddenly bolted to my right. I halted and whipped my head to the right, a water pulse charged. When I got to the point where he should have been…

He was not there. I looked all around me. Where the heck had he gone? Too late. Far too late, I decided to look up. In fact, I chose such a poor time to look up that I got nailed straight in the nose by the heavy end of Riley's stick. I felt a sharp, lasting pain in my snout, and was of course driven into the dirt. Riley wasted no time in hooking his weapon in my horn and tossed me into the air.

His next series of attacks involved juggling me by smacking me in various weakened places with pinpoint accuracy. When he finally let me land, the silence was deafening. There was a liquid running down my face, and it hurt a lot. I made the mistake of touching it with my paw, and pain shot through my entire head. There was a little blood on my paw, barely visible on my red pad.

"Wha-" I began, but Riley had picked me up by my scruff again. "Broken snout" he said flatly, causing my eyes to widen. His staff was not in hand. I watched as he pulled back his hand and made a fist. As he did, his knuckles cracked twice. It sounded sickening.

**Crack! Crack!**

Then, he threw the punch. Straight into my broken face. My yell of pain was very loud this time. There was no healing right now. I could not fight this guy, but it seemed I had to.

"Please!" I yelled at Riley "Caleb is in danger! Even if it is his choice, he can't make it!".

Riley looked at me. "That is not for you to decide" he finally said. I looked at him incredulously. "Yes! It is! I can't let him just die in here! What's keeping him asleep anyways?!"

The boy shook his head. "You actually have no idea huh? I don't think telling you anything would help you in any way. In other words, i'm going to beat you to unconsciousness, find whatever brought you here, beat **that **up if it's a living thing, and send you both out of here the hard way".

I shuddered at the thought. I struggled to get up, but Riley stopped me with a good smack on the head. I made a squeak of pain before hitting the ground again. Riley began to talk.

"Everything you have done to Caleb ends here. Everything. I don't personally care how it ends. I would prefer not to kill you, so there are a few options". He planted his foot on my side preventing me from getting up and put his weapon between him and my face. "Option one, is that I find the way out of here and toss you through it, along with any other intruders. Option two, only viable if the way out is not there, I detain you until this place blinks out of existence. Maybe it'll kill you as well as us. Dunno".

"There's no way out of here unless Caleb wakes up…" I lied, trying to suck up the pain. He scowled. "I shall simply have to knock you out and keep you that way, then". As he prepared to do just that, I felt that there was something wrong. Something he said. His emotions showed an intense anger, but hidden in that was sorrow. He did not want to hurt me, but he had told me that I was not going anywhere near the house. He had not said that about Caleb.

_Is Caleb actually in that house at all?_

Maybe not. Maybe Caleb was somewhere else. If that was the case, what was he actually guarding? What had he said? "_Maybe it'll kill you as well as us" _Riley had said. Us. That was the word. But he had unwittingly suggested that Caleb was not in there. Who else lived in this world?

"Wait" I said softly, but he continued his work on setting up a knockout blow. "Hang on" I said, louder this time. "Shut up" he muttered, and prepared to take me down. As he started, I cut to the chase. "Who else lives here?"

Riley stopped cold. He looked straight at me, his eyes still hidden within those glasses. His serious expression turned to one of slight surprise. He was nearly as impassive as Caleb. Nearly, but, being able to see through Caleb, I could easily see through one of his dream creations. He noticed how intently I was looking at him.

"How do you know there are others?" he asked somewhat angrily. Apparently that was not a good thing, to know about others living here. His voice had a hint of a growl to it.

_That's what he's guarding. Not Caleb. He hates what i've done because Caleb is his friend, just like he is a friend to Servine and Mightyena. What he is actually guarding…_

"Caleb's not in that house, is he?" I asked. He prepared to strike again. "You're not protecting Caleb… Who are you protecting?"

Riley swung his weapon, making my world go black with quite a bit of pain.

**Riley's POV **

I paced about in the living room of the house. I had not found any exit in the nearby woods at all. I had carried this little pyromaniac along where I went, knocking her on the head whenever it seemed she might wake up. How pathetic. I knew these woods like the back of my hand, and I found nothing. Had it collapsed or something? Or had she actually told the truth?

I glared at her. She had managed to burn my coat too.

_Actually, I did that trying to be fancy with my brutal explosion of fire on her. That's my fault. _

Didn't stop me from getting annoyed either way. I had put the books away. Sarah was still unconscious after two hours, probably from me repeatedly whacking her. After a while, I had sighed and sat myself down to tend to her snout, which I had badly damaged in my attack on her. If she were awake, I would not have dared.

Inwardly, I wondered why I was doing this in the first place. I should be doing something else, something worth my time, like cleaning this place up a bit. Instead, I was tending to somebody's broken face. I basically force-fed her sitrus berries until she was in prime condition. The next time she woke up, it would take more than one hit to knock her back out again. I sighed at that thought. The kids were still asleep (thank god), and Sarah was dozing away, now looking rather peaceful. Having realized that her waking up in the actual house would defeat the point of the fight completely, I decided to remove her from said house.

After dragging the girl a ways away, I just dropped her there and sat on the same rock. I resolved that I would give her a choice: Either leave this house and either get out of the dream or just wander, anywhere else but here, or have me give her a severe beating again.

I was happy that I had practiced my little maneuver before using it on Sarah, the one where I would seemingly disappear. It was actually simple: Lunge out of view, and spring skyward immediately. The only reason I had broken the poor girl's face was because she had looked up at the wrong time.

I had been very angry for my friend, and I was still angry, but I realized that that anger had controlled me, made me reckless. If Sarah had been at all tactful, she could have just run around me to the door of the building. I was only lucky she wasn't. I resolved to never be so careless again. My job was defending the kids. No more. No less.

I looked up at the mountain, it's new features the product of such a powerful anger that the very dream world shuddered now and again. Pure anger struck the ground in the form of lightning. The place had frozen over. It was actually a nightmare up there.

_At least until it's over…_

I shook my head. What was I thinking, that it was alright this was happening? I wanted someone to blame, and Sarah was that someone. In fairness, she did instigate the entire scenario.

I would not try to stop Caleb. I respect his judgement, however flawed it is. However, I hoped. I secretly hoped that Sarah would actually go find him. I would not say so aloud.

What worried me was how much Sarah saw through me. It stunned me. She was dull enough to try and come here in the first place, but smart enough to know that not only was Caleb not in the house, but that there were others as well. It worried me that she was that good at it.

It also worried me that I was so careless that I let something like that slip. Maybe I had given a clue to it in my words. Also, I found myself monologuing. Like a typical bad guy. Was I the bad guy here?

_I'm a failure at my job, even after all the training I put in. All of that training, it was just physical training. Never once did I think about how I was talking…_

I had failed, and it was nobody's fault but mine. I think that hurt the most, that I was a failure. That I had not done my job properly. I had not kept this place properly safe and this absol, this silly, lovestruck absol had managed to get in.

So I decided to let this go, unless Sarah tried to get into the house. That thought in my head, I decided to just lean against the door instead. Sarah probably would not try anything if I was guarding the exit, unless she decided the window was a better deal than I was. Oh, wait, the windows.

_I think it's better just to talk about it really. I'm sure the girl has some form of patience, right?_

There I was with the assumptions again. I just wanted to trust somebody. That was it. I was thinking about how this would end up in the future with no thought to myself because I never considered myself fully alive, but I realized that I wanted to at least hang on a little longer. Maybe that was what life was. And yet, I still would not go against what Caleb wanted for himself. At least, not me.

_Sarah can go… If she really wants to. She won't enter the place knowing Caleb is not inside. _

So I waited. It seemed I did a good job with knocking her out, because it took an entire hour for her to wake up. In that time, I had to tell the kids to stay inside today. They had not taken it well, but they know i'm serious when I get stern with them. I pushed up my sunglasses up to my forehead, and checked on her. Her breathing changed as she began to wake up.

I quickly moved my glasses back over my eyes. Why? Not sure. Just felt like I should avoid eye contact for some reason, like I felt myself wanting to every time I wore these things. I backed up and sat down as she sleepily opened her eyes, like she had just taken a nap or something. "hnnnn… Huh?" she asked, starting to wake up.

I only had to wait before I could watch in amusement as her eyes widened considerably and she basically leapt a foot in the air attempting to get to her feet, almost landing on her right side and impaling her horn into the dirt. Quite amusing.

"Where-" she started before finally noticing me, sitting there about ten feet away from her. My face was impassive. She backed up a step, took a step forward, and then backed up several feet. Inside, I was starting to laugh my guts out, but on the outside, my face was stone.

"Uh…" she stammered. I waited for her to say something, or ask something. She eventually pointed in the direction of the house. "Caleb's not in there, is he?" I shook my head. She put her paw down, and then she suddenly, upturned it and felt her face. "I-... You healed me?" I nodded. She seemed incapable of figuring out what I was thinking.

Maybe that was just what I wanted. I guess I took being figured out more harshly than I thought. Anyways, my ploy did the trick. Sarah was confused. "Er…" she stammered. I almost lost it there, but I decided to test myself. Stay serious. Stay on task.

Finally she got her words together. "Why would you heal me?"

"'Cause you were hurt".

"Why, though?"

I sighed. "My job is to protect this house. Being confident that you would leave knowing that Caleb isn't here, well, I decided that it would be best to get you back to full strength".

"Wait… Why's that?"

"You'll need that strength to get to the guy".

"Uh… Why?"

"You ask that a lot".

She seemed taken aback, apparently realizing that we were having an actual conversation. She stammered again, causing quite the confusion in her mind. Maybe her brain was addled after getting slammed about by a shortstaff. Though she had had several sitrus berries, it seemed like she had a concussion, or maybe the concept of being so close to Caleb was making her a little dense. Being told that she could get out of here and search for Caleb probably blasted her inner thought process to shreds.

I waited for her to pick up the pieces. She was just staring at me at this point. maybe I had gone too far. Then again, this was **hilarious**. I had no idea she was like this, the kind of person who basically falls apart if things go unexpectedly. Finally, I decided to intervene before I lost it entirely.

"You're gaping at me like a fish".

She slammed her jaws shut. She blinked, and finally found something to say. "I don't understand why you're so calm… Weren't you just attacking me?" I nodded. She seemed exasperated. "Just answer me!"

"Nah, i'm good". I said, allowing myself a smirk. She glowered at me. "At least tell me where Caleb is" she demanded.

"No".

Her eyes widened. "Excuse me?!" she practically shouted at me.

"I still respect Caleb's decisions, no matter how bad they are. If you want to find him, do it yourself" I said with finality. The joke was over. I had something to make very clear. "If you ever try to go in this house, I **will **hurt you far more next time". She seemed to have already guessed that. I expected her to just go away.

Instead, she seemed to calm down a bit. To my surprise, she sat down. "You know where Caleb is" she said "I don't. I need to know". I frowned fiercely, but the many emotions I had seen in her eyes had been replaced by resolve. "No you don't" I said instead of providing an answer.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. My frown persisted. "I mean that you have a very difficult choice to make. I'm saying that you'd better figure it out yourself. If you can't prove that you really want to get him back **that **bad, prove it. Otherwise, you will probably recover eventually with him out of your life".

"How can you say that!?" she shouted "That last bit! It's not just me, it's everyone else you jerk! Nobody will ever recover if he dies!"

I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You haven't seen enough of the real world at all, have you!? You've only ever lived right here! Everyone out there knows Caleb! Every one of them would be destroyed if he died, you insensitive prick! Who are you to say I could possibly recover?!"

_Woah, there. She's actually angry. And right. I've never seen her angry like that. What is the real world like? Is Sarah an accurate representation?_

She had said that everyone, not just her, would be heavily affected by his permanent disappearance, and it was true that the real world would be so much different than right here, and despite everything, I did not understand life and death. It was black and white for me, because Caleb had never told me what to expect. For a moment, annoyance flashed through me before I realized that Caleb never expected this to happen.

So what did it mean to be alive? Caleb mentioned once just how surprised he was at how the kids and I were so… Sentient. To him, we were essentially living people, particularly those two kids. We were still around when he was awake after all. Why was he so sealed off anyways? I still did not want to help for some reason, but now I think I had a different reason.

"You are right. I don't know how the real world works. I won't ever breath a breath of real air in my life" I said, causing a triumphant flash to appear in her eyes. "But you are smart, and i've seen you figure things out. Caleb may be in the wrong, and you may be right, but my job is to protect this house. You're job is to find Caleb. So find him. Figure it out" I said.

**Sarah's POV **

I stared at Riley uncomprehensively. His expression had changed when I had yelled at him. I wanted beyond anything to push him for more information, but no such info was coming. He had seemed to grow sad when I mentioned that he did not know the real world. That was because he knew that perfectly well.

"_Figure it out" _He had said. Where could he be that was a clear spot to be and was not the house in front of me? A clearing perhaps? Where would Caleb go that would be the most secluded, and would involve complete privacy? I looked about. Anywhere in the forest may be able to do, but the most obvious place to check…

I looked straight at the mountain. It's scary ice and red clouds, along with ted lightning striking it repeatedly. Could Caleb really be up there? Was there any other obvious places to check? Probably not. If there was anywhere to check, it really could only be there.

"I think that there's only one place to check…" I muttered aloud. Riley just looked at me. His glasses were unnerving me at this point. What was behind those? I was looking for unspoken confirmation, but his scowl was practically stone. Finally, I turned to leave.

"Sarah" Riley suddenly said behind me. I turned back. To my surprise, his mouth was different from the normal scowl. It was Different. Was that pity? To my shock, he brought his hand up to his face and pulled off the blackglasses. His eyes had plenty of emotion. There was definitely pity there, and there was a sadness as well. That was probably from my comment on the real world. His eyes were a deep blue, with several lines in it, kind of like mine were now. They looked deep, just like how Chimecho described mine.

"If you're gonna do this, at least be careful. This place isn't as safe as it used to be" he warned. After a moment, I nodded. This was a trial of sorts. Riley respected Caleb's decisions above all else, but that did not mean he liked it. I wondered again who he was actually protecting. If I asked, he may become hostile again, but here he was, warning me about danger in this dream.

I gave him my thanks with my eyes, and he nodded. Then, I finally turned away from him and walked off towards the mountain.

**Riley's POV **

I watched her leave. Sarah's disappearance was lengthy, because the trees grow thicker over time. More of them, I mean. It took several minutes for me to no longer see her at all. I placed my sunglasses over my face again. Why had I even taken them off?

I had not told her everything. I had said to be careful, and it was terrifying to remember why. I could have at least told her about the fact that the only way into the mountains was guarded by **something**. I'm not even sure what it is, because I don't have many memories of Caleb's world, but as soon as he sealed himself off, something very dangerous just showed up at the entrance.

I shuddered. Not even I could beat that thing. It sounded like it had a female voice, but it was anything but a living creature. She was indestructible. She could not be reasoned with. If Sarah went against her…

_Sarah's dead meat. Why hadn't I warned her? I forgot. That's what happened. I was stupid, and I forgot. _

I cursed myself. Sarah, being the pokemon she specifically was, would try to fight her way past, and she would lose. If I could not beat her, Sarah could not beat her. I had basically sent Sarah to her death. I scowled. There was no way for Sarah to win. I would not dare leave this house, but I could only make sure that the kids stayed in the house.

_I'm sorry, Sarah. You can't win against Sheila._

* * *

**Jango: Hehehe... Hi guys... Guess what?**

**Hyperjade: Unfortunately for Jango here, i survived his trick. **

**Jango: That last bit, uh, that last bit wasn't s'posed to happen. **

**Hyperjade: YOU SUPERGLUED A FREAKING REFRIGERATOR TO THE CEILING! YOU TRAPPED IT SO THAT IT WOULD OPEN UP AND POUR IT"S CONTENTS ON ME!**

**Jango: Oh, you've snapped... Uh, you realize that the whole thing was not supposed to fall right?**

**Hyperjade: AND WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!? YOU SUPERGLUED A FRIDGE TO THE CEILING! DID YOU THINK IT WOULD STAY THERE?! IT'S NOT EVEN MY GODDAMN FRIDGE! YOU STOLE IT, DIDN'T YOU?! I CANT EVEN IMAGINE HOW YOU WOULD MANAGE TO DO ANY OF THAT AT ALL! REFRIGERATORS DON'T STAY ON THE CEILING EVEN IF YOU SUPERGLUED IT! IT'S NOT EVEN POSSIBLE!**

**Jango: Calm down, calm down, you need to calm down.**

**Hyperjade: Calm down!? You squashed me with a fridge! I don't even care that you also managed to bring some sitrus berries with you! **

**Jango: Look, i get it. Back to my room. **

**Hyperjade: Oooooohh, no you don't. **

**Jango: Uh... What?**

**Hyperjade: I can do so much worse, Jango. I can do SO much worse...**

**Jango: ...**

* * *

**Alright. This is Hyperjade. It's been a day since the above stuff happened... Just waiting 'till I calmed down a bit. Jango is not here at the moment. He probably wont be talking to you guys at all for a few chapters. His first punishment was cleaning up the mess and finding a way to return it to wherever he stole it... Now he's doing something that he absolutely hates, and it's just hilarious listening to him complain. He deserves it after tying to KILL me. **

**But i'm only here this time to tell you guys to review and tell me what you think of the chapters. Please. I need a distraction right now. Also do your follow/favorite thing if you enjoy the story. Thank you. Oh, and character bios. Still want them. **

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	29. Chapter Twenty Nine: Sheila

**Hey, everybody. This is actually Hyperjade. Jango is currently serving his punishment. He's actually taking it better than i thought he would, under the circumstances. There are some things in this chapter i want to clarify, but i will do so in the author's notes after the chapter. **

**Jango should be back next time, for all of you who like listening to the guy. Maybe he would be able to talk to you if he had not decided to drop a freaking refrigerator on me. If you could, please discourage him from doing that again if he talks about it on here. I think he does read the reviews before i do. **

**I promised you action packed chapters, and now you have this one as well as the one just before this one! Have fun reading this chapter, i personally enjoyed writing it a lot. Thank you. **

**-Hyperjade**

* * *

**Chapter 29: Sheila**

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

I wandered through the forest now. Having left Riley alone for fifteen minutes, I already had to correct my direction as I found myself losing the mountain in the trees and having to find a gap in the trees to locate the thing. This forest was quite thick, and the morning sun still made it look beautiful. It was silent as well.

I travelled along, speculating on what exactly happened there with Riley. Beating the crap out of me one minute, healing me and talking to me the next. It felt weirdly secret, the way he took of his glasses. It was like it was something he would not do unless he trusted me. I wanted to thank him or something, once I had gotten back.

The sunlight filtered through the trees. It's light coming from the side making things either deeply shadowed or brightly lit. Beautiful. Almost as beautiful was the strange thing coming up. It looked like a mirror within an altar. The ground around it was unnervingly distorted, as if it's appearance in the dream was random and sudden. Someone was sleeping under the mirror on a stone platform. It looked something like a white mightyena or something. Instead of simple white marks, it had intricate orange marks, and in some places it's fur was longer and had strange marks on it. A strange disk, wreathed in flame, floated above it's back.

"Uh… Hello?" I asked. It did not stir. Deciding to investigate, I walked forward and sniffed at it. It smelled like a female. What pokemon is this? I nudged her a bit with my paw before realizing that this may be another guardian of sorts. maybe she protects the forests here, and messing with her would be bad for my health.

She yawned and curled up tighter. I frowned at that. Not even the decency to greet her visitor? "Excuse me" I said again. I should have just walked away or something. I should have never even looked at this strange pokemon of sorts.

She opened her eyes and looked at me irritably. She sighed lightly through her nose and just went back to sleep. Right there. I could tell that she was asleep based on her breathing. Now I was annoyed. I was being ignored.

"Hey, Lazybones" I said, prodding her. "Wake up". She woke again, and now her irritated look was a bit more… Alert. She now yawned in my face and slowly got to her paws. She really was shaped and sized like a white and orange mightyena. She looked straight at me, and for some reason I felt warm, like the sun was beaming straight on me.

"I suppose a 'hello' is in order" she said, still evidently tired. I tried to figure out who she was. I had heard plenty of stories of what pokemon were, and I tried to fit her species. Nothing I knew of was like a reverse mightyena. "So who and what are you?" she asked, at the same exact time I said "Who exactly are you?"

Now it was a standoff, both of us waiting for the other to answer. Finally, she sighed and motioned towards me with a paw. After blushing ever so slightly, I began. "All right. My name is Sarah, the absol. I'm here looking for Caleb, who's been sleeping for several days. He'll starve like that, and I need him- I mean I need him to wake up".

She tilted her head a bit as she looked at me. "You have interest in him" she said. It was not a question. It was a statement of fact. "Uh, yeah" I said.

"You have graced me with your name, now you may know mine, Sarah the absol" the pokemon said. I got the sense she actually thought my name was the whole thing. "Oh, it's just Sarah. I'm an absol" I amended before she could continue. "Very well" she said, and I detected some annoyance in her voice. her eyes had narrowed a bit.

"You may call me Amaterasu" she said "Okami Amaterasu". What a strange name it was, and complicated, not to mention it being two words. She continued. "It appears that I am not the original. This 'Caleb' you mentioned, it appears as though I am a memory of something he once saw. As is my mirror" she said "I have a few of his memories of what I was based on, apparently a video game of sorts. It doesn't matter to me personally".

I frowned at that, now distracted from my mission. "What's a 'video game'?". She did her best attempt at a shrug. "I do not know, though frankly I don't think I need to know".

"Do you know where Caleb is?" I asked. She nodded, and I jumped at my chance. "Where then?". Amaterasu looked at me. "Do not be so hasty, child" she said. Wait, how old was this chick? "I **am **eighteen, you know" I retorted. She just sighed. "Then stop acting like a child. Your loved one is on top of the mountain of course, though he has sealed away most of the mountain with invisible walls".

"And where does the 'most' come in?"

"There is one entryway, though it is guarded by something I have never seen before" she told me. I was slightly unnerved by the 'guardian' bit again. "Oh, great, another guardian" I complained "Riley was annoying enough back at that house…"

"Calm yourself" she said, and I realized that she did speak quite a bit like Caleb, and I decided to ask her about that. "You know, you do talk a lot like Caleb does…"

"I imagine so" she replied "I am a product of his memory, however accidental my appearance was here, I imagine that this 'Riley' you mentioned would be as well. This entire place would be product of his imagination". That sounded about right. Caleb was smart enough to do all of this. One thing I had noticed was that the sunlight here was not perfectly like the sun felt when you basked in it, but Amaterasu seemed to make the area feel warm, as though the sun was shining right on my face.

"Could you help me with this guardian, whoever the heck it is?" I asked. Amaterasu seemed thoughtful. "Such a decision is difficult for me to make, Sarah" she said "this is your quest. You have the reason and possibly the ability to save your loved one. However, it is not unknown for beings on a quest to have an assistant, at least temporarily".

Her impassive face turned straight towards me. "Yes, Sarah. I will come to assist you with your battle against this guardian. After this battle is over, I will return here. The remainder of this journey is yours". I was overjoyed. Here was this ever helpful person willing to help me in the upcoming battle. At least I knew it was a battle this time. "Thank you! Thank you! You have no idea what this means to me!"

"Let us simply go" she said, beginning to walk, her strange disk billowing in flames constantly as she walked. I had to follow. I was on my way to get to this one way into the mountain, and I guess we would have to fight something. I was just glad that I had help this time. Would Amaterasu here have been able to beat Riley? I had no idea what she was capable of.

I would find out soon enough.

As we traveled through the forest, the mountain began to loom. I shivered as I saw it's fang like ice structures and the red cloud. Amaterasu noticed. "Yes, the power at the top frightens me as well. It is unlike anything else around this world. It's beauty is marred by this obstruction". Deep stuff. Suddenly, she seemed to want to move quicker.

Amaterasu broke into a run. I almost forgot to speed up as I saw with amazement flowers sprouting in her wake temporarily before sinking away after a few seconds. I sprinted after her. For some reason, I avoided being directly behind the female pokemon, if she was a pokemon at all. I did not want to run over the exotic looking, beautiful flowers, despite that they vanished right after. Amaterasu pressed ahead. It was odd, to say the least, that she was suddenly in a hurry.

She saw me looking at her strangely. She attempted to explain herself. "i simply wish to be awake and alert for the upcoming battle. Hang on, she already seemed awake. "I thought you were awake enough after I woke you" I said. She looked ahead, prompting me to do so as well. I dodged a tree. "Oh, I was plenty tired" she assured me in a way that did not seem very reassuring "I shall probably be fully awake when we arrive".

_...Huh…_

Suddenly, the trees cleared, revealing the mountain. A large structure stood in front of the mountain, theoretically the only way into the mountain. Pillars were there, looking rather majestic. Again, a strange area around this thing was distorted like it had simply rippled into existence.

Amaterasu only slowed down as we entered the courtyard. She looked at me. "You keep up well, Sarah" she praised. I nodded. I searched for this enemy we were supposed to get past. The place was made of stone, with staggered rows of stone bricks. The pillars were cylindrical, and had a point at each top. There was five pillars on each side, and two near either entrance.

There was only one other object in the room. It was very strange, and was far bigger than me. It's green shape was odd. It looked like it could roll somehow, on those treads. What was that thing?

"I have not actually seen the guardian of this place myself" Amaterasu said, looking about "be on your guard". I nodded. We slowly began to walk around the one object in the room, splitting up around the thing in an attempt to get to the door. Maybe we would get out of here without a fight.

_Never think like that. There's always a fight. _

Suddenly, as we were both on either side of the strange thing in the room, we heard a terrible noise.

**BZZZZZZZZZZT-VVVVVVVVV…**

Little blue lights appeared on the two things near the top of the thing, rotating through the small pieces, and the whole top moved up a bit to be pointed straight forward. Too late, I realized that this must be the guardian. Both Amaterasu and I suddenly bolted for the door.

Way too slow. The thing suddenly shot backwards, rollong to obstruct the door. It succeeded. We were not getting through to the mountain without a fight. The thing began to speak in an artificial yet surprisingly female voice.

"**E.R.F.P.G ENABLED. MORTAR CANNON ENABLED. DISTORTION MORTAR CANNON ENABLED. SCORPION CANNON ENABLED. NAPALM CANNON ENABLED. FREON BURST CANNON ENABLED. MINE LAUNCHER ENABLED. DISTORTION MINE LAUNCHER ENABLED. LASER SABRE ENABLED. ARC SABER ENABLED. REMOTE MINE LAUNCHER ENABLED. DISTORTION REMOTE MINE LAUNCHER ENABLED. SONIC BURST CANNON ENABLED. LOCK ON MISSILE LAUNCHER ENABLED. TETHER GUIDED MISSILE LAUNCHER ENABLED. NUCLEAR MISSILE LAUNCHER ENABLED. TETHER GUIDED NUCLEAR MISSILE LAUNCHER ENABLED. LASER DESIGNATOR ENABLED**" It said in that female voice, very loudly. I wondered what all of these things it was talking about were.

"Uh…" I said. Amaterasu looked at me like I was an idiot, and I soon realized why. The thing moved it's top half like someone turning their head, it's 'head' lowering to look straight at me. Suddenly, I realized just how much it's center piece looks quite a bit like a blastoise's cannon.

_Uh. Think of something!_

"So uh…" I said conversationally "Do you have a name?" Amaterasu looked at me like I had lost it. However, the thing seemed to like conversation or something. "**I AM THE B.F.T, OR BATTLE FORCE TANK. YOU MAY CALL ME SHEILA**". Sheila was moving her top piece up and down as she spoke. I forced a smile. "Er… Nice to meet you, Sheila" I said. Sheila seemed terrifying, but maybe we could talk this out. "So, what exactly are you?"

"**I AM THE B.F.T, OR BATTLE FORCE TANK. MY PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS TO PREVENT ANYONE OR ANYTHING FROM PASSING THIS LOCATION**" she said "**MY PROGRAMMING INSTRUCTS ME TO ANNIHILATE ANY BEING WHO ATTEMPTS TO BYPASS THIS LOCATION**". "Oh, uh, annihilation sounds rather extreme" I said "H-How about something less dangerous, like… I don't know… Just letting us past?"

"**I'M SORRY, I CANNOT DO THAT. SUCH AN ACTION IS BEYOND MY PROTOCOL. MY PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS TO PREVENT ANYTHING FROM BYPASSING THIS LOCATION**" she said. Now both Amaterasu and I sighed. Sheila was still focused on me. "Look" I begged "This 'protocol' of yours, whatever that means… Could you maybe ignore that? Just for us? It's kinda important…"

"**I'M SORRY, I CANNOT DO THAT**" She said again "**MY PROTOCOL STATES TO LET NO LIVING CREATURE PAST THIS POINT**". Now I really wanted to know the meaning of the word protocol. "What the heck does 'protocol' mean anyways?" I demanded.

"**PROTOCOL IS A PROCEDURE OR SYSTEM OF RULES GOVERNING AFFAIRS OF STATE OR DIPLOMATIC OCCASIONS**" Sheila answered. Okay, it means rules. Probably should have guessed that. "Right" I said "is there any way that those rules can be considered null and void?"

"**MY PROTOCOL CANNOT BE CIRCUMVENTED. THERE ARE NO STATED EXCEPTIONS TO ANY PROTOCOL I CONTAIN. I AM SORRY**". This 'B.F.T' was going to be a pain to get past. "Caleb won't wake up and he needs to! He needs to eat and drink! He's in danger! I know you are guarding this place, but we need to talk to him!" I told the massive thing. She looked completely impassive.

"**MY INSTRUCTIONS ARE TO PREVENT ANYONE FROM ENTERING THE MOUNTAIN**" Sheila said again "**ANY REASONING IS IRRELEVANT**"

Crap. Unlike Riley or Amaterasu here, this thing was clearly not alive. There was no reasoning with it. We had to get out of there and into the mountain, the problem was that there was a massive 'battle force tank' in the way.

_How can we get past this thing? What can it do?_

She had said quite a bit as she 'enabled' a bunch of stuff. What the heck was a nuclear missile? For that matter, what was an arc sabre? I wondered which was worse. "Hey, Amaterasu, you have any ideas?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the BFT. "**MY NAME IS NOT AMATERASU. MY A.I. NAME DESIGNATION IS SHEILA. YOU MAY CALL ME SHEILA**" The BFT said. Amaterasu got it, however. She stepped forward. "Hello, Sheila" she said with an air of authority.

Sheila turned her cannons to view Amaterasu. Amaterasu, to her credit, did not quail at the view of the thing in front of her. Sheila began moving her cannons up and down as she spoke again. "**HELLO. MAY I INQUIRE YOUR NAME?**" Sheila said. I guess the nodding was to demonstrate that it was her that was speaking, or something.

Amaterasu had her regal composure of course. "You may call me Amaterasu" she said "If you have any sense of right and wrong you will stand aside. The life of the being who maintains this place is in the balance, and he must be rescued from himself. Please, Sheila, if you have any decency in you whatsoever, allow us to pass".

What a speech. I would have stood aside for that in an instant. The problem was that Sheila was not me. "**MY PROGRAMMING DOES NOT INVOLVE WHAT IS KNOWN BY YOU AS 'DECENCY'. MY PROGRAMMING STATES TO KEEP ANY BEING FROM ENTERING THIS ENTRANCE**".

"Amaterasu, what do we do?" I asked. She looked troubled. Finally, something popped into my head. "Oh, Sheila! You know… It can't be comfortable crammed into the doorway like that. Do you want to talk about this in the open?" I asked. My plot grew into a plan as I thought maybe she would say yes. Amaterasu seemed to get my plan, nodding silently.

Sheila defied my expectations, but I realized that my expectations were stupid and I probably should have known that she would not comply. What she said made perfect sense. "**I AM NOT EQUIPPED WITH SENSORS TO ALLOW ME TO FEEL DISCOMFORT**". That was it. Nothing else was said. "Well, if you don't want to move, and we need to get through…" I began, and she seemed to shudder on her strange base. How did that roll anyways?

"Why guard a door if there's no door, right? If you just break the gate, maybe travel would be impossible?" Sheila did not take her cannon away from my head, though Amaterasu looked at me like I was crazy. "**THE ENTRANCE ITSELF IS A FORMALITY**" Sheila said "**THE INVISIBLE WALLS WOULD REMAIN THE SAME AS BEFORE. BREAKING THE ENTRANCE WOULD DO YOU NO GOOD WHATSOEVER**".

"Good" I said "We don't have to worry about any accidents then".

"**IF YOU ATTEMPT TO BYPASS ME, I AM UNDER ORDERS TO ANNIHILATE YOU**" Sheila said. She had caught me in the act. I looked at Amaterasu, and she came over.

"What do you think?" I whispered. She looked at me, and did not speak for a moment. Finally, she began to whisper back: "Perhaps we could-". Sheila decided to interrupt the conversation. "**I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW**". I frowned at that. We were speaking quite quietly. Suddenly, my frown had another reason to exist.

"That's a lot of attitude from someone with no apparent emotion" I said, turning to the battle force tank. She, who had her cannons pointed at Amaterasu, turned to me again. "**OF COURSE. I HAVE SEVERAL EMOTION AND ATTITUDE PROGRAMS INSTALLED WITHIN MY PROGRAMMING. I AM CAPABLE OF GIVING ATTITUDE IF I WANT TO**" She said. Even that last bit sounded quite like attitude, but I had a problem with that.

"You can have emotions and show attitude, but you can't make the decision to let us through? That makes no sense" I told her. She had no face, and could not make any visible emotion. I wondered what emotion 'program' was active at the moment. It was frightening that I could not figure her out.

"**I AM PROGRAMMED TO FOLLOW ORDERS. MY ORDERS ARE TO KEEP ANY BEING OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN**" she said. It was a shame. "Whose orders anyways?" I asked. Sheila regarded me. "**MY ORDERS COME FROM SOMEONE NAMED CALEB**" she said, causing my eyes to go wide. **He **ordered that no one entered? Even more worrying was that he had ordered the **annihilation** of people who tried to pass her. That did not sound like Caleb at all. "Caleb did? You're sure?"

"**I AM CERTAIN**" Sheila said "**MY SENSORS INDICATE A SLIGHT INCREASE IN YOUR HEART RATE. DOES THIS SURPRISE YOU?**"

I said nothing. My heart rate? What does that mean? She had figured out that I was surprised not by my face, but by my heart rate? Does how fast my heart is beating change based on whether I am surprised? I guess so. "That does not sound like Caleb at all" I said, before having an idea. "Perhaps he was not completely in his right mind?".

"**CALEB'S STATE OF MIND IS IRRELEVANT**" Sheila said "**MY PROGRAMMING STATES TO FOLLOW HIS ORDERS, DESPITE HIS POTENTIAL STATE OF MIND. IF CALEB WISHES TO CHANGE MY ORDERS, HE WILL COME HIMSELF**".

Dang. It seemed we had to fight, but Amaterasu had one last thing to try. "Then we shall not try to enter, Sheila. I apologize for taking your time" she lied. It was probably good that I could tell she was lying, or I would have not been happy. Amaterasu turned to leave. We would wait for Sheila to power down again and then race past before she could turn on again.

Sheila shattered that plan as her female voice rang out to us. "**YOUR HEART RATE HAS INCREASED NOTICEABLY, AMATERASU. I HAVE DEDUCTED THAT YOU ARE LYING**". Amaterasu froze in place, just like I had. Lying makes your heart rate increase as well? That was bad. Very bad.

"It looks like there's only one way through" Amaterasu muttered. I nodded in agreement. The problem was, there was a massive tank in the way. We turned. Sheila had her cannons focused on us. The blue rotating lights on her small side cannons suddenly looked far less friendly. I used to think of blue as a nice color, but after Crystal Star and now this, I was thinking it was a bit more menacing, hiding power.

Amaterasu sprinted forward, me trying to keep up. As before, flowers sprouted in her path, though they erupted straight from the stone, cracking it. She jumped straight onto Sheila, hopefully where those cannons could not shoot her away. Sheila did the obvious thing: Raised her canons to try and shake Amaterasu off. Knowing that she was doing so to get me an opening, I leapt to get past the large metal tank.

Everything went wrong when was one second away from the gate. Sheila's cannon suddenly swung in a full 360 degree spin that tossed Amaterasu and smashed me at the same time. It seemed there was no limit to how far the cannons could turn. I was thrown clear, landing on my back so that Sheila was directly in between me and the gate. Sheila decided to turn my blood to ice with her next statement, apparently.

"**SUBJECT ATTEMPTED TO BYPASS GATE. HOSTILE ACTIONS AUTHORIZED**" Sheila said.

_Ah, crap. _

Faster than my mind could follow, something shot out of the main cannon with a resounding **BOOM**. The object sailed towards me, and I instinctively tried to use the wind to push it aside, but whatever it was was moving too quickly and was clearly heavy. It slammed into me and promptly exploded in my face.

The pain from the attack was tremendous. It hurt so bad, I involuntarily yelped in pain real loud as I was tossed away and straight into a pillar. After I staggered up, I checked on myself. There were pieces of metal stuck in my chest, barely visible to my eye through my fur. There was blood as well. Not much, but some.

"**ENTITY RESISTANT TO PHYSICAL SHELLS. DISTORTION MORTAR CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, before the cannon on top of her metallic body sunk straight into the main head, and it soon came back out. This time, a blue ring was on the cannon, and the thing looked slightly different. How had she fit that into that body of hers? Did she have more?

The word 'distortion' registered, as I realized that she was about to do something very different to me. Another **BOOM** accompanied this shell, and I tried to jump away, though I knew I was way too slow. As it got to about halfway, something very odd happened.

Time seemed to just stop. I could still think, but I was suspended in the air, unable to move. Sheila was absolutely still. I could see the thing coming to blast me to unconsciousness suspended in the air. It looked like a balloon of sorts, with a blue tip and a metal form. It had three tail fins that had equal distance from each other. I could not move, could not breath, but I could think.

_More blue. Why does blue always mean danger now?_

I wondered why everything was stopped, but about ten seconds after it started, everything suddenly snapped back into motion. The shell, though moving very fast, was visibly slashed in half by some unseen force and it detonated in between me and Sheila on the spot. Instead of a massive fireball, a sphere of energy roared out for a radius of about sheila herself. The ground was pulverized, and turned to mushy dirt that I would probably sink in if I jumped there. All that stone, turned to dirt just like that. Would it turn me to dirt too?

_Better not find out. _

What had saved me anyways? I looked around, and Amaterasu was staring at Sheila, daring her to make a move. Sheila began to talk again. "**TEMPORAL CONTROL DETECTED. DANGER. REMOVE THREAT IMMEDIATELY**"

Amaterasu winced at that. She had done that? Sheila apparently thought so. Her cannons swiveled to focus on Amaterasu. She fired the attack pretty quick, but time stopped again.

Having been looking at Amaterasu when it happened, I saw her standing still, but her tail raised up. It tip became dark, and when she swiped it, a black line appeared in thin air about three feet in front of her. She was painting the air itself, from a distance. When she had finished her line, right in between her and the attack, time started again and the line vanished, accompanied by the 'mortar shell' getting sliced in half again.

She was freezing time, and whatever she painted, apparently happened. I wondered how far that would go. Amaterasu sprinted over to me and stood there. "Any ideas?" I asked her.

"None".

Oh. Alright. I guess we just had to fight then. Gathering my power, I breathed one of my best flamethrowers at Sheila. I kept the fire up for ten seconds, blasting everything on Sheila's side of the field, until I had to catch my breath. Amaterasu looked rather impressed, actually. That flamethrower had been impressive, even to me. Maybe Amaterasu's aura that felt like the sun was like being in the presence of a sunny day attack.

But when the flames died, that stupid tank was just like it was before. No change whatsoever. "**HIGH HEAT LEVELS DETECTED. CALCULATING… THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL**".

"What?" I asked in as low of a voice as I could muster. That was an insult if I had ever heard one ever. now I was mad. She had just called me weak.

"**I SAID: HIGH HEAT LEVELS DETECTED. CALCULATING… THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL**" Sheila repeated herself. My scowl deepened.

"Take this!" I shouted, firing off a quick water pulse at Sheila instead. It detonated on the surface of her vehicle, but she seemed fine. "**WATER BASED TECHNIQUE DETECTED. THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL. ARSENAL TO BE UPDATED. WATER PULSE CANNON ADAPTING**" the tank said. She was doing **what**? Was she stealing my techniques too? That and that her female voice was sounding far too cheerful for me now.

"I'll-" I started, before a paw on my shoulder stopped me. Amaterasu had me by the shoulder and was giving me a look that said: Calm down. "Don't let something like this insult you, Sarah" Amaterasu said to me "Sheila knows not the effect her words can have, her not being alive". Amaterasu looked at the tank, which was sitting motionless, watching us. "Let's only be grateful that she seems to say everything out loud" she whispered.

"Look how motionless she is? What if we can slip by?" I asked. She got a determined look on her face. "Before we go, I can help with that fire" she said. Time froze again. I waited for her to finish what she was doing, not being able to see what was going on at all.

When time started again, I suddenly felt the sun's rays beating down on me. Hard. Had Amaterasu used sunny day? I looked up. No, Sunny day just makes the sunlight brighter. Amaterasu had created a **second sun**. A second freaking sun, right above my head. The heat poured onto me. I knew it would make my flamethrower more powerful, but it would probably not be enough. I could provide a distraction at best. She nodded.

At that moment, we rushed forward and tried to split up. Sheila, as it turns out, was just watching us. She was not required to stand still as I had so desperately hoped. She launched another distortion mortal shell straight at me, with near pinpoint accuracy. I jumped to avoid it, but she whipped her cannon straight towards me in midair, and one of the side guns fired for the first time. A blue burst of energy shot me.

Instead of knocking me away, it just dealt quite a painful burn in my side, and my muscles spasmed painfully. As a result, my landing, straight in front of Sheila unfortunately, was as ungraceful as possible. She decided to shoot me a couple more times. Those blue bullets **hurt**. My legs were not working properly either.

It was kind of like paralysis, but instead of being frozen in place, my body was just limp. "**PULSE GUN AMMUNITION SEEMS TO PARALYZE YOU**" Sheila remarked in a rather snarky tone. That annoyed me quite a bit. I lifted my head with difficulty, ignoring the pain from my new burns, and tried to burn her again.

Sheila remained undamaged again, despite the new power behind the flamethrower. "**SCORPION CANNON ENABLED**" she said, rolling forward, and her cannon sinking into her body and a silver box reappearing. Suddenly, the box seemingly magically extended one box width to each side, and a long nozzle started to come out, one segment at a time, like **CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANK!**

At that last bit, the nozzle slammed into my chest, holding me down. "**FIRING MAIN CAN-**" Sheila began, ready to rip me apart, before time stopped again. It was weird dealing with that repeatedly. I kept trying to open my mouth to talk, or even trying to breath, but nothing would happen. Then, My eyes blinked as time restarted, accompanied by a **CLANG!** as Sheila's thin cannon was shattered at the halfway point. Shards of metal showered my face, but I was about to attack again. I launched another flamethrower trying to get flames straight into the cannon's gaping hole.

After I managed to scrambled away from the firefight, somehow calm considering how close I had just come to possible death, I noted that Sheila actually looked quite damaged near the base of the cannon as well. Sheila rolled back again. "**RETRACTION FUNCTION COMPROMISED. EJECT MALFUNCTIONING EQUIPMENT**" Sheila said, and the broken cannon popped right off of the top of her body and slammed into the ground. "**THREAT LEVEL INCREASED. LASER SABRE ENABLED**". A strange set of tubes filled with pure red energy rampaging within came out. The tubes were parallel, but they stopped at a point and some sort of metal contraption attached itself to it with a single hole.

_Lasers. Not good. _

To add to the freaky paralyzing blue bolts from the turrets, we now had to deal with whatever that thing did. I reminded myself that lasers were either big, powerful, yet at a mediocre speed, or weak, small and ridiculously fast, almost instantaneous. The fact that this was a weapon for a bigger threat, as Sheila said, then it must be powerful. Yet, it could not be that big, considering how small the point was.

Sheila turned the thing towards me, after firing a few bullets at Amaterasu. Amaterasu of course dodged it quicker than I could have. I yelped and leapt out of the way, firing a water pulse at the same time. The water energy sphere was immediately hit with a super fast laser that just ripped through it.

It probably saved my life though, because the light bent at a weird angle from the sphere before said sphere was obliterated. Lucky me. I had only thought that for a moment before there was quite the crash. I looked at where the laser had redirected, and the pillar it hit had been cut cleanly in half, it's top half having slammed into the floor.

"Oh dear…" I muttered, realizing that if I had actually been hit by that, I might be in the same boat. I had to break that thing as fast as possible. Amaterasu saw that as well. She decided to occupy Sheila, jumping right onto the top of her laser gun and started whaling on it. I have not seen her little disc at work, but as she swung her head around, the bladed circle swung around and put gashes in the metal. When Sheila began to spin her head really quickly, Amaterasu leapt up and delivered three more spinning strikes on the stupid laser shooter.

This punctured something, I think, because as Amaterasu was about to land on the spinning thing and be brutally knocked away, there was instead a violent explosion of red light that knocked us all back. I slammed into another pillar, my eyes unfocused.

"**ERROR. ERROR. DESTRUCTION OF VOLATILE ENERGY CONTAINMENT. EJECT DAMAGED EQUIPMENT**" Sheila said, and another popping sound came, followed by the sound of broken glass. I had to find Amaterasu first, before we handled Sheila. We could not damage her body, but we just had to keep disabling her endless supply of weapons.

There was too much dust, and Sheila apparently had sensors. She could probably tell where I was if she could tell how fast my heart was beating.

_I have 'sensors' too, you stupid tank. _

I activated my absol sense. After I managed to go most of a day blind, I was better at this now. Amaterasu was lying near the wall. I ran to her, and could see she was very badly injured, and bleeding. Being at ground zero of that cut her apart so much. She was even missing a leg. Without hesitation I delivered a max powered heal pulse. It worked within five seconds. "you all right, Ammy?" I asked. Yeah, I called her 'Ammy'. It was faster to say than 'Amaterasu'.

She looked cross with me as she got up. "Ammy?" she asked crossly, apparently unshaken by my healing move. I nodded, and then we heard the sound of something rolling towards us with some weird noise. Sheila appeared out of the smoke, something coming out of the cannon to replace the laser sabre. "**NAPALM CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, her tone an octave lower, probably signifying anger.

The new weapon was green, nearing the color of the tank. A single flame originated from the tip of the thing. Yellow tanks were embedded in the sides of the thing, and the word 'napalm' was written in white on the top right. "What is napalm?" I asked, hoping to distract Sheila.

"**NAPALM IS A FLAMMABLE LIQUID USED COMMONLY IN INCENDIARY WEAPONS, IS DIFFICULT TO PUT OUT AND CAUSES SEVERE BURNS**" Sheila automatically replied. That did not sound fun. Ammy jumped to the left, I jumped to the right to avoid the dangerous weapon, before Sheila blasted the ground. The fire did not put itself out, as it seemed to be mostly fuel. I shot a water pulse attack at it, and it did not put the fire out at all.

Sheila kept blasting at me, having seen Ammy's great condition and attributing that to what she deducted to be my healing technique. It was, but now Sheila was focusing on me. I was the healer, and Ammy was doing the damage. We really did make a great team.

Fire was everywhere, and I had nothing to put it out with. My water pulse was mostly an explosive attack, and the napalm did not really go out anyways, so I was sunk. Then, Ammy had an excellent idea. She seemed to understand where to hit Sheila right now, where I did not. Time froze once again as sheila launched a napalm and I launched a water pulse. Amaterasu drew a line between the water pulse, made a swirling motion, and put the end of her line on Sheila herself.

Suddenly, my water pulse switched directions, slammed the napalm burst in midair, spun around Sheila, who was now about to shoot Ammy, and extinguished the flame on the tip of her cannon's nozzle in one shot. She could change the direction of these things as well?

Sheila's next attack simply blasted out that flammable liquid without the fire, simply soaking Ammy in the liquid. She looked pissed now, her coat matted with the strange liquid. With another brush technique, the napalm liquid flew straight off of her and soaked Sheila instead, drying Ammy off entirely.

"**FIRE COMPROMISED. NO MECHANIC FOR DRYING FORM AVAILABLE. FREON BURST CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, swapping her fire gun for a nearly identical one that was blue instead with 'freon' written on it. I wondered what that one did.

We found out in an instant as she shot a single white projectile at Ammy, prompting her to jump. Because of all the fire around, she had a rough time with getting about. She did have plenty of things to use as ammunition though with those time stopping art projects of hers. Plenty bursts of fire suddenly leapt as Sheila from all directions.

That single white shot froze the ground solid where it hit. An ice attack. Brilliant. I could just burn that away, right? Unfortunately, Sheila was now taking us seriously, making the battle suddenly ten times harder. The first problem was that she was rolling about really fast for something as heavy as she is. She was actually drifting when she turned. That's how fast she was rolling about, and her speed was the same forwards and backwards.

She was switching weapons constantly now, avoiding only the weapons we had not destroyed or rendered dangerous. We had to make more of those disappear. She was making full use of her turrets as well as more mortar shells now. The only thing that kept me from blowing up was Ammy's time stops and weird attacks that sliced them in half.

"**E.R.F.P.G ACTIVATED**" Sheila stated, and instead of switching cannons, the blue lights on her side turrets became red instead.

_Oh dear…_

Sheila's turrets became faster than we were. The speed of the attacks was nearly doubled, and the bullets were faster, and finally, it hurt a **ton**. After about a minute, I was on the ground, badly burned and my muscles not working again. Sheila rolled up to me. "**WATER PULSE CANNON ADAPTATION SUCCESSFUL. WATER PULSE CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, and her cannon switched to a cannon that looked like a mortar cannon, but its center was visible, with some sort of sphere floating in the center. The last foot of the metal of the cannon was bright blue. She had successfully copied my water pulse attack.

"**FIRING MAIN CANNON**" Sheila said, and a water pulse shot out of the thing at intense speeds, faster than I could have ever charged or shot one. It was right next to my face when Ammy saved me once again, stopping time and doing something while I was forced to just stare at the water pulse in front of me. It's blue glow seemed very deadly coming from the tank.

It took twenty seconds this time for Ammy to do her job, which must have meant that it was an intricate work of art. Literally. For me, however, it may have been twenty years. The attack was about an inch from my face after all.

The attack bounced away from my face and started zooming about the room, actually killing a few fires before slamming straight back into the cannon's entrance, perfectly slotting into the weapon and unleashing a massive explosion. I felt teeth grab my scruff and I was yanked away from Sheila as Amaterasu pulled me away from the battle. As smoke filled the center of the arena, we tried to recover near the side. Ammy seemed relatively unharmed, but I was hurt. Badly.

"I do not have the skills to heal you" Amaterasu admitted. As she said that, Sheila showed up again. She looked undamaged. Her water pulse cannon was in prime condition. "Ugh… Break already!" I got out in Sheila's direction.

"**I CANNOT BE DAMAGED BY A WATER PULSE CANNON**" Sheila explained "**THIS WEAPON WAS DESIGNED FOR QUICK LAUNCH AND DAMAGE AND SEMI-RAPID FIRE**. **CURRENT WEAPON HISTORY COUNTERACTED. SONIC BURST CANNON ENABLED**".

A new cannon replaced my water pulse knockoff, looking very strange and glowing yellow. Amaterasu seemed ready to defend me, but if this was a higher grade weapon than all the others, we were in serious trouble. "Ammy, get us out of here…" I croaked. Amaterasu seemed to understand my meaning. She grabbed me by the scruff again and ran for it.

Sheila's attack fired at where we were, released with a high pitched **FWI! **Sound, sailed silently over to a pillar, and struck. That was when the noise came as the yellow energy ring created an incredibly loud sound that blasted my eardrums as the explosion tore apart the pillar. That had been loud enough to break one of those pillars, we were screwed if we got hit.

"I need to break that" Ammy muttered, dropping me behind the pillar to hide me and leapt out. "You can't… You'll get taken apart" I whimpered, pain shooting through my body as I struggled to get up. Before Amaterasu went to take on that monster, I had a better idea.

Sheila was coming fast, so I had to say it quickly. Hopefully, the sound of Sheila's moving was goint to drown this out. "Put something in the way of the attack instead of breaking the weapon" I hissed "Might make Sheila damage herself-".

I got nailed by something in the side, another red bullet. I had gotten the message across, but Sheila was focusing on me. Suddenly, Ammy decided to cause a distraction. Time froze, and I saw out of the corner of my eye her drawing an infinity symbol. Suddenly, Sheila burst into flame without a source, as her other attacks seemed to need. This fire did not exactly go out for a while either.

This actually distracted the large green tank, as she turned her cannons to look at Amaterasu instead of at me. The body of the tank did not move at all. Now Amaterasu went to the other side of the room, easily able to dodge the first two sonic blasts. Sheila was prompted to roll forwards and aways from me. She was far enough away from me for Ammy to do whatever she needed to.

_How are you going to put something in the way of Sheila's attack?_

I worried that Amaterasu actually had no idea what to do here. She seemed very willing to protect me, and I worried that she was distracting me for my sake, not her own, and that she was going to get herself killed in the process.

My fears never had a chance to come true because Amaterasu had some tricks left. When sheila shot her next attack, time stopped with the ring mere inches away from Sheila. Amaterasu put a single point of ink in the air there. A single dot of ink that, when time began again, An actual tree shot upwards into existence straight in front of Sheila. Which of course resulted in that tree being obliterated by the attack, and Sheila made a freaky distorted noise before rolling back. She looked quite damaged, with dented armor and sparks coming off of gashes in that armor.

"**EXCESSIVE DAMAGE ACQUIRED. THREAT LEVEL INCREASED. INITIATING FULL COMBAT**" Sheila said. Her voice seemed damaged as well, warbling a bit. I guess whatever allows her to speak was messed up.

_Full combat? She wasn't serious before?! The heck!?_

"**MORTAR CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila warbled, bringing back the old weapon that had caused my chest to bleed. I was in no shape to dodge, but unfortunately Sheila was targeting Amaterasu. This meant that Ammy was in trouble, and it also meant that time was stopping every five seconds as Amaterasu chopped up mortar shells and dodged red pulses of energy.

She did something impressive then. Under the increasing onslaught that was going to pound her with no room or time to dodge, she drew two horizontal lines. I wondered if she was going to cut two things at once, but this time, when time started again, it was moving incredibly slowly. Amaterasu had never moved while drawing, and I guess that she could not. This time however, she was moving at her normal speed. I was moving at the speed of a slugma, and so was Sheila. Sheila's cannons could not keep up with Amaterasu, despite how fast they could move. Ammy of course was able to dodge the storm of bullets and mortar shells.

"**FREON BURST CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, shooting ice at Ammy now. Unfortunately, Ammy had a different way to handle that. Unlike the water and fire, she could create more ice instead of redirecting it. As my ally leapt away from the small freezing projectile, she froze time, even herself hanging suspended in the air, and drew a line between the blast and Sheila's cannon.

Sheila's cannon now had a chunk of ice on the tip of its nozzle. Sheila had already been firing another, and the ice only increased in volume, stuck within the nozzle. Another weapon disabled. No more ice.

"**FREON BURST CANNON DISABLED. SONIC BURST CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila said, pulling out the yellow weapon again. Sheila bumped against a piece of pillar while racing towards Amaterasu, actually catching air despite her weight. It seemed she would land right on top of my friend, but before I could call out a warning, Ammy froze time. She put another dot in the air, which would grow a tree again. Sheila found herself tossed higher into the air as a tree slammed into her underside.

Sheila looked relatively undamaged from the sudden tree, having only been tossed, but I hoped that the damage would be dealt when she landed. "**HOVERCRAFT TECHNOLOGY ENABLED**" Sheila said. What did that mean? Her strange treads were sucked into her form, suddenly replaced by winglike things that blasted air out from underneath. I was slammed into the ground by the wind it made. There were spinning things on the underneath that blasted air downward, so much power in it to keep me on the ground.

Sheila slowly sank down, right above me. When she got to a certain point, the wind from the new move was actually hurting me. Sheila was actually floating. The force of this wind was strong enough to keep Sheila afloat. Hovering right above the ground, right above me.

_Oh. 'Hover'craft. Duh. Should have guessed what that meant. _

Amaterasu silently ran towards Sheila and me, slowing time down again. After dodging several blasts, she tried to help me out of there. She could not get to me, being blasted away by the intense wind keeping me pinned. During that, I was in quite a lot of pain, my yell of agony was slowed down considerably. Amaterasu had to get out of there when the time slowing ran out of time.

"**TEMPORAL SLOW DETECTED. ARC SABRE ENABLED**" Sheila said, switching to something above me. I could not see it from underneath the thing. I could however hear electricity hissing within it. Lightning.

Amaterasu slowed time again, but I realized what Sheila was doing. Sheila needed a fast attack that could not be slowed down, and lightning was it. A powerful **ZZZZZT** sound came around, and poor Ammy was blasted away by blue lightning bolts. The attack was constant. Sheila continued zapping Amaterasu Lightning flashed over her body, spasming and twitching at the violent electrocution. Sheila was moving forward as this happened.

She cleared me, and I struggled to my paws. I had to save Amaterasu. I tried to trot as fast as I could. I tried to put a water pulse in the stream, but it sailed right through. And then, I discovered the danger of her new weapon. The lightning going through Ammy suddenly started jumping towards me, causing an intense pain in my burned spots.

The attack could chain shock me. I collapsed again. Sheila continued to zap us, and there was something I had to do. I painfully lifted my head and pushed all of my remaining energy into another heal pulse. I poured the energy into Amaterasu. Despite the pain and the sudden headache as I fried, I kept it up, healing Ammy faster than she could be damaged. Finally, she leapt up and stopped time, much to my relief as the pain disappeared.

She began to draw, though it wondered how she could see with my pink energy enveloping her. I could not see all that she was drawing, but my major hope was that she could redirect lightning as well. When she was done, time moved again, I was still zapped a few times, and the pain returned, making me yelp. The rest of the lightning swirled around sheila in a vortex of electricity, making her warble again, her voice even more distorted, actually sounding messed up at this point.

Amaterasu grabbed me, slowed down time, and ran. Seemingly because she was actually holding me, I was not frozen with the rest of time. I also was not affected by the slowdown. Ammy raced away and started going straight towards the door to the mountain.

_We're going to make it!_

We raced right through the door. We did not stop, except for Amaterasu putting several trees in the way of the doorway. The mountain trek began. Sheila emitted an incredible noise behind us. She was not down yet. She would chase us and try to kill us.

"**LOCK ON MISSILE LAUNCHER ENABLED**" Sheila roared behind us. I shuddered in fear while hanging from Ammy's mouth. In any other second, I would be so embarrassed a blush would show up on my face in seconds that I was being carried. Now though, I could not handle running on my own. A **shoom** sound came from behind us.

I stole a look back to see Sheila racing behind us, her normal form back, moving much faster than us. Faster than that was a white object with fire behind it. "Jump, Ammy!" I yelled, and Amaterasu immediately complied. The thing soared up after missing us, and as I watched, it took a massive swooping turn, and began to chase us again.

"It's chasing us again!" I cried out, causing Ammy to look. She swore under her breath, so quiet I almost did not hear her. Sheila sent another one after us, making two. She had to sink her cannon down and bring it back up again to have another missile. That made the rate of fire slower, but these things don't give up.

Amaterasu moved to the side as a missile roared past and this time turned away to the left and soared around the mountain. They follow us, specifically trying to hit us. They were not just going up when they missed. I tried to say something, but Sheila launched a third one. Now we were always avoiding them. The sound of a missile drowned out my mentioned what I had noticed. Then, Sheila was upon us.

"**YOU SEEM TO HAVE ACTIVATED MY ANGER PROGRAM WITH YOUR ACTIONS. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR DESTRUCTION**" Sheila said. That did not sound good. It meant she was actually angry, or at least she was acting as her 'programming' told her to in an angry situation. The three missiles began to bore down on us from three different direction. No matter what, we were getting hit.

**B-B-BOOM!**

The three missiles slammed into the ground, throwing us away. Thankfully, we managed not to get run over by Sheila. She skidded to a stop right in front of us. We had destroyed plenty of her weapons, but she still had her sonic burst cannon.

"**SONIC BURST CANNON ENABLED**" Sheila confirmed, switching to that horrible sound weapon. I would hate yellow rings for days to come, if I survived. If we survived. Amaterasu was too far away to heal her, whimpering slightly as she looked at her wounds. Shards of metal was in her side, dried blood in her fur. There was plenty of that in my flank as well.

Sheila lowered her cannon to point right at me. Everything I had gone through, worthless. I had failed, so close to Caleb, so close to saving my love. I had failed to get everything I had needed to get.

"Could you do something for me?" I croaked out. Sheila was silent for a moment. "**WHY WOULD I DO ANYTHING FOR YOU?**" she asked, anger in her voice. That anger thing was still going strong. "Tell Caleb i'm sorry… Can you do that for me?" I asked weakly.

"**...**"

"Please…" I said. I would not die the way I was now, but as soon as she shot me, I definitely would. That sonic burst cannon was just too much. Sheila was not attacking yet, however. Perhaps she was calculating.

"**ANGER PROGRAM DISABLED**" Sheila said, causing me to start with surprise "**I HAVE NOT BEEN INSTRUCTED TO SEND MESSAGES TO CALEB. I CANNOT DO THAT. I AM SORRY. FIRING MAIN-**".

**CRACK!**

The sound reached my ears. I looked down at what had interrupted Sheila from killing me. The stone we laid on, had cracked underneath sheila.. "**RECALCULATING GROUND STABILITY. LANDSLIDE IMMINENT**" Sheila said, before the sheet of rock suddenly broke away underneath the tank and Sheila flipped over as she tumbled down to a lower level. She hadn't used her hovercraft to help, maybe she had simply forgotten.

"**ERROR. ERROR. NO SYSTEMS AVAILABLE TO FLIP MAIN BODY**" Sheila said "**MISSION FAILURE. ABORT. ABORT. Abort. Shutting… Down… Bwooo…**"

Sheila shut down, her voice becoming lower in tone until it died away with that 'bwooo' sound. It was over. We had won by sheer luck. I always seemed to win by luck nowadays. I had been lucky enough to survive Mightyena's rampage, and then Caleb's. I had been lucky enough for Riley to decide that killing me was not worth it. I had been lucky enough that Sheila had just fallen off a cliff and ending the battle. I had been lucky enough that Amaterasu had chosen to help me. I had been lucky enough that Caleb had been unable to leave in the first place.

Every victory I have had that really mattered was decided by luck. My luck. Good luck. Had I ever earned a victory? Ever?

_I'm about to. I have to save Caleb. _

Amaterasu first. I shakily walked over to my new friend and sent the last of my special energy into a heal pulse. It was weaker, but it did the job. Metal came out of her wounds, which closed. The blood came back into her body, cleaning itself first automatically so that no dirt got into the bloodstream. Amaterasu was healed.

She gave me a grateful look that I enjoyed for a moment before I fainted right there.

* * *

"Urgh…" I muttered. My vision came into focus slowly. I was on my belly, lying down in the middle of a path on the mountain. The part of the mountain I could see, along the side and down towards the forest and the house, it was beautiful. It looked amazing, this creation of Caleb's. The only thing that tore my gaze away from the beautiful view was the sound of lightning.

This brought my attention to the peak, which still had red lightning flashing around it, though it was much closer. I shivered at the sight. If Caleb was up there… What could possibly be going on?

"Ah. You're awake" the familiar voice of Amaterasu said. I jumped up, thinking at the last moment that I should not be going anywhere with my injuries, I found that I was all but healed. "Hey, Ammy. How long was I out?" I asked.

I looked about till I saw her. She was frowning at me, probably due to me calling her 'Ammy'. "You have been sleeping for about five hours" she said "I know you're in a hurry, but don't go just yet. You can't possibly be completely healed, despite the strange fruits I found lying around. I can say I am glad that the yellow ones healed you".

"You found sitrus berries? No wonder I feel like taking on the world" I said. I did, really. I wondered how many of those had been shoved down my throat. Amaterasu tilted her head. "Sitrus berries?" she asked.

"Yeah. Healing berries" I said. She looked confused. "But those things were too big to be berries. They were fruits at best" she said. I blinked a few times. I decided to drop it. "Right. Whatever. I need to get to Caleb" I said. Amaterasu looked confused still, but nodded, deciding to leave it be.

"I will take you to the crater" she said "after this recent incident, I want you to remain safe during the rest of the journey. However, you will speak with Caleb on your own". I nodded to that. She began to walk up the trail. I walked a bit faster than that, wanting the run but unsure if Ammy would follow my pace. Amaterasu did keep pace with me for the moment.

We neared the peak agonizingly slowly. There was a bunch of ice in what looked like half of a waterfall, like it had spilled over the edge and frozen just like that. The flash freeze in question must have been basically instantaneous. What could freeze water so quickly?

I inwardly groaned, partly at how long it was taking to get to Caleb, and at my own impatience as well. I was just so needy, and I knew it, but I could not exactly turn off my feelings. I had always been emotionally weak, and it had started the day I first heard somebody's dying heartbeat. The pain it brought. I hoped never to hear it again, but people get old. That's a fact. No matter how durable we are, death eventually comes. Unless you're a god like Palkia of course.

I almost lost it and sprinted the last twenty yards. Mentally scolding myself, I kept my near-trot pace until I crested the hill. I gasped as Amaterasu padded up to me.

The top of the mountain was a single flat sheet of ice that led across the entire place. Ice looked like it had been thrown away from the source and froze there in the forms of the tooth-like structures and the partly made waterfalls. What kind of flash freeze leads to this?

In the center, I noticed finally, of the sheet of ice that made the top of the mountain, was a single white figure, a great distance from me. Red lightning crashed around him, shattering ice and putting craters in the ice. There was no water below the ice, just more ice. This must have once been a beautiful lake, but even the water underneath was frozen.

I knew who I was looking at was Caleb. Who else could it be? My legs moved almost before I gave the mental command to do so, as I began to sprint towards him. Amaterasu stayed behind, as she said she would. I was sprinting as fast as I possibly could towards him. Caleb. I was finally going to talk to him once more!

_I'm here! I made it! I can save you!_

I was getting closer to him, now able to see him defined with this perfectly white fur and his razor sharp tail, horn, and claws. His back was turned towards me, but I knew him anywhere, anytime. I could just tell.

I skidded on the ice to slow down and walk up to him. No sense in spraying him with ice. I could barely contain myself. I wanted to just pounce and say 'Hi!'. Instead I forced myself to just walk. Ten yards away…

Five…

Three…

**BOOM!**

Nothing but shock registered on my face as an incredibly powerful, unseen force blasted me away from Caleb at an intense speed, sending me sliding far away from him. What the heck had just happened to me?

"You…" I heard Caleb growl. His voice seemed to come straight from the air itself. Suddenly, I shivered. It had gotten **colder**. The cold somehow got through my thick pink coat with minimal effort. Something else had caused that shiver as well. Caleb had sounded different. Angry. Very angry.

"You would dare to come here…" Caleb growled. Again, the air seemed to vibrate at his words, resonating through the entire dream. His power here was immense. As he began to say that, the red lightning increased in quantity, one blasting apart the ground near me. This time I saw what the lightning from that could was doing. It was not just blowing away whatever it hit, but I watched as some of the ice seemed to just fade from existence entirely into red smoke. Erased from the world.

"Caleb-" I started, saying it loud enough for him to hear me, but he cut me off.

"How dare you come here…" he growled. More lightning. The ground shook at the power of the explosive bolts. How dare i? What did he mean? I was trying to save him! "You can't stay here! It's dangerous!" I called. Suddenly, the ground rumbled again, shivering. The ice between Caleb and me now had a thousand hairline cracks.

"Yes. It is" Caleb said in a tone that made me very edgy. Did he not care at all? Caleb continued. "After everything you have done… Every step you took, I never imagined you would follow me here".

"Of course I would!" I yelled "you can't just starve yourself here! You can't-" I began

"Why not?" he asked coldly. What the hell was he saying? "What do you mean, 'why not'?! You'll die!" I yelled, trying to get him to snap out of it.

"Everything you have done to me… Everything I had…" Caleb still spoke, as more mild earthquakes and lightning appeared "Everything you have tried to take from me… You succeeded".

_He's angry. I have only seen him angry when he thought I had died but… This is different. _

He still had his back to me. "Why should I care if I die?" he asked coldly. What the heck was he trying to tell me!? "Why should I care if one more thing is taken from me, when I do not truly have it in the first place? Why should I care if I leave the world? I have nothing, Sarah. That is **your **doing".

_No way can he be actually saying this!_

"That's not true!" I argued, moving forwards again "you have friends! You have whatever you need! You have-"

"Let me guess. I have you?" he interrupted, and the temperature dropped "I would never have anything here. What good are friends, what good are basic materials, what good are **you**, when you have literally taken everything from me?" I saw him shake his head. "You are the most arrogant, foolish being I have ever met, that you think you could possibly try and sweet talk me back to that stupid world of yours. And now, now you have the nerve to invade what is truly the last place I have left".

_Oh…_

"For my entire life, I have withheld my emotions, my basic human instinct, held myself back to keep my morals intact, to maintain everything good that I had, despite the chaos that is either of these worlds. Now, I have no intention of doing so. I have no reason to. Every amount of anger, of selfish need that I possess, I won't hold anything back now" Caleb said, and finally he stood up and faced me.

My breath caught in my throat as I saw his eyes. The same shattered glass look that I had seen when he told Palkia to close the portal was in his eyes, but something else. Mindless rage is the only way to describe it. He was angry beyond reason, beyond anything. He could do anything he wanted to now. "_I won't hold anything back now"_ Caleb had said.

"Because there is something I want, and I will no longer deny myself this. Consider it my gift to myself after all of this unnecessary pain and suffering, this pain. Because what I want…" His glare met my eyes, and horror seeped into my consciousness. This was not Caleb. This absol was what Caleb had become, shattered just like the look in his eyes, everything he had ever built torn down, and it was all my fault. This Caleb would do something my Caleb would never do, and I felt with no small amount of fear that he was going to.

"Is revenge" he finished with a dream shaking growl.

* * *

**Ooooohhh, ominous, right?**

**Please review. Please tell me what you think of this chapter, and this time it's even more urgent. Anything to improve on, i need to know. Anything i should keep the same, i need to know too. Plot elements. Characters. Things. Excitement. And the like. Also, if you enjoy the story, go ahead and follow/favorite. Follow for email notifications, favorite if you want to. **

**Right. I told you guys at the start here that i would explain a few things. Caleb's memories are becoming reality in this dream world, now uncontrolled in most circumstances. That is why Amaterasu appears now, as a memory from Caleb about the video game "Okami". (Excellent game, by the way). That is also why Sheila makes an appearance, though she is a mix of two memories. The character name and some of the attitude, as well as the voice belong the Sheila from Roosterteeth's "Red Vs Blue". The tank body and most of the weapons are from an obscure 1997 PC game called "Recoil" (Which is my favorite game of all time, by the way). So that's where those two come from, though it is hinted at that Caleb purposely made Sheila to guard the place, and Ammy's appearance was unplanned. **

**That out of the way, I also love character submissions, though i would like them sent to me by PM, and i will tell you why. I wish to avoid spoilers, and I want character submissions PM'ed to me so that such spoilers can be avoided. Thank you. Setup down below. **

**Anywho, Thank you all so much for reading, and i hope you have a lovely day!**

**-Hyperjade**

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	30. Chapter Thirty: Caleb

**Hey, everybody! Jango here. Glad i was here for this. I no longer think setting traps for Hyper is a good idea, but i jsut cant help myself. I do think that any future traps will be smaller scale and not punishable by... You know, i'm not going to say. I handled it well enough, so here i am! **

**Anyways, i seem to have a new job here, too. Hyperjade has this list here... Let me read it real quick. **

**"Special thanks to the people who have sent me character bios. Thank you to whichever guest sent me Team Inferno. Another thank you to Nopemanor for sending Team Destiny Bond. I thank the both of you for sending character bios. -Hyperjade". **

**Hyper says that this is to thank people who send character bios to him, and to respond to reviews. Good stuff. He's not been doing that so far. He was bound to get his act together some time. **

**This chapter, though. I quite enjoy it, so you probably will too. Have fun reading this thing, everyone!**

**-Jango**

* * *

**Chapter 30: Caleb**

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

"_Revenge"._

The word echoed in my head repeatedly as Caleb walked slowly towards me. Revenge. Revenge. He wanted revenge. For everything he had lost, for everything he could have had. He wanted revenge for himself, something he had never focused on before. Himself. He wanted to avenge the pain he suffered. He wanted revenge.

On me.

my senses alerted me to the intense amount of danger rolling off of him. He had nothing to lose. He could do anything. Anything he wanted to. For the first time in his life, Caleb was going to hold nothing back from himself. He would no longer going to ignore what he wanted, and now what he wanted was to avenge everything he had had.

I desperately held my gaze into Caleb's searching for any trace of who he had been before, before he had been completely destroyed. Nothing. Nothing but that shattered glass look and mindless rage and anger, and a little bit of sorrow. That sorrow, perhaps the only bit of him that was left of the old Caleb. Maybe he could be saved, but not like this.

_Not like me. I'm the reason he's so angry. _

What chance did I have of calming him down? What chance did I have of calming him down? And was he gone forever? Was he changed forever? What would he do from here on out? If I did not drag him by the scruff out of this dream he would just starve in here, and it was clear that he would not come willingly.

It scared me that he was willing to just starve here and die. Alone, on top of a mountain that probably used to be beautiful. Just like Caleb used to be an impressive figure. Now both were terrifying, and I had no idea what to do. This was Caleb's place of silence, his only place to be completely alone, as he had told me, and I had just ran right into it.

"Why don't you move?" Caleb asked harshly, now very close. I dared not answer, because he would probably only get angrier. "Perhaps you are too afraid to run. Perhaps you had not expected how angry I am with you. Perhaps you thought that everything would be all right if you just showed up". Suddenly, I felt a pressure around my body, freezing me in place.

"You arrogant absol" he snarled, and a blast similar to what I felt before struck me in the face and threw me almost a hundred yards away. I slammed into the ice and rolled away, wincing at the pain of crashing into the sharp shards of ice. The damage was not too bad, but I still got up slowly.

_Arrogant. That's what he thinks of me. _

Was I arrogant? Was I that? I could figure others out, but with an unsettling sense of reality I realized that I had no idea who I actually was. I knew what I felt, I knew I wanted to be around Caleb. I knew what I wanted, what I needed, but not who I was. Caleb knew who and what he was. Maybe I admired that about him.

But that was no longer true. Caleb had no idea who he was anymore. His anger was beyond what was sensible. The state where he could do anything to who he thought was at fault, or who he knew was at fault. In other words, me.

"Caleb, please!" I called to the person who used to be Caleb "this is not you! Please, you know that this can cause only pain!" I was crying now, because if he even listened to me, there was no chance he would change his mind.

"I don't think you understand" he growled, creating another mild earthquake and more red lightning "This **is **me. The person I am inside, behind the barrier I place to protect others, and myself. Now, there is no point in that barrier, and there is no point in holding myself back". His eyes met mine, and I saw the truth in them. At least, I saw that he believed what he said.

His true self… It may be what he believed now, and maybe that was what he always believed, but he was dead wrong. He would always be wrong about himself. He put himself down. He assumed that others were better than him, and it leads to this. This, his monstrous self that does not really exist. He did not realize just how much he was to the world, how much he was to me.

Lightning crashed down next to me, annihilating the to my right. He was destroying his own world like this. "Caleb-" I started, but something slammed into my back and pinned me on my side. The unseen force held me there, pressing me against the ice so hard that it cracked. It hurt really bad.

Caleb came up to me. "Don't even speak!" he yelled "you have no right to talk to me after what you have done! I want beyond anything else to take you apart!" My eyes widened at that, stunned into silence. Caleb continued. "My entire life! Gone! Everything I could have been! Gone! Everything I was, gone as well! And it's **your fault!**

At that last sentence, I was blasted a great distance away, sliding into an elevated sheet of ice, which was shifting from the tremors. The whole place was becoming a canyon of sorts very slowly. This time I groaned as I got up, only to be slammed against the icy floor once again, this time with enough force to make me yelp.

"_Everything I was"._

"_Everything I could have been"._

"_My Entire life". _

The things I had helped take from him. The things I had very deliberately torn away from Caleb in order to make him stay, and despite everything I wanted to believe, I had known perfectly well what Caleb would lose. I really was arrogant. Pathetic. Useless, only winning battles by sheer luck, but there was no luck now. Caleb had control of this entire dream and he was intent on attacking. I had destroyed him.

"I'm sorry…" I whispered, out of breath from the crushing that I was still experiencing. Caleb had not heard me. Instead, he was walking towards me again silently. I knew he would not stay silent as he got to me again. He would tell me more things, scream out about the unfairness of everything, and blast me again, and the worst part was that he was absolutely right. The world was unfair to him. His own world may have been even more so. I had been unfair.

All of us who called him our friend, boyfriend, or acquaintance had been unfair, maybe except Wigglytuff, who had really done nothing wrong. Servine, Mightyena, Jake, and the others only made it harder for Caleb to find his way home.

One thing still felt wrong. He had his way home, so why did he stop? What caused him to realize he could not do it? I thought it was his 'friend's behind him, and me, but if he really could not make himself go back to his world, what kept him here?

_Just how horrible is his world that he would rather stay?_

Yet, Caleb seemed to regret it. He had been destroyed afterwards, and he still was. If I survived, I would have nightmares about the look in his eyes. Broken, enraged, almost insane.

_Stop that. _

Who was I to be an optimist? My luck had run out. I was going to die here unless Caleb decided to spare me for some reason. Did I even deserve to be spared?

_Stop that too. _

Nobody deserves to die. Not me, Not Caleb, not anyone. Why would I think otherwise? Is it any more than guilt? Even the guilt would never stop me from trying to talk to him, to try and stay close to him, because I loved him. Unconditionally. I wanted to save him, but what could I possibly do?

The ice promptly exploded underneath me, sending me sky high. Ice changed course in the air to strike me on my way down, causing quite a bit of pain. I yelped as a burst of speed sent me straight into the ground, making a crater. I was able to stagger up, but when I checked myself, there were shards of ice in several spots in my body, a few drawing blood.

The pain brought no emotion along with it. My emotion of pain beat down all of the others. The pain really felt dead, irrelevant. I just felt emotional pain and sorrow at what Caleb had gone through, and what it caused him to become. Caleb was not himself.

I climbed out of the crater, just waiting for the next attack. I would not run. I would not hide. I would not fight. I would try to talk, and accept whatever punishment followed. Caleb was very close, close enough to leap to, staring at me with his almost foreign eyes. "You always enjoyed burning away what was in your path… Enemies, friends, futures" Caleb growled "Perhaps some fire would suit you?"

Suddenly, I was engulfed in searing, white hot fire. I screamed at the intense heat, trying to get away. Just because I can use fire does not mean I am immune to it. This fire was the hottest, most deadly I have ever experienced. My scream pierced the air.

Suddenly, as soon as I collapsed in a new puddle of water the fire had made, about two inches deep. I closed my mouth, it being partially underwater, and breathed through my nose. Caleb started talking again. "This used to be a lake in a crater. Water expands when it is frozen, and when the entirety of a lake froze, the level would rise above the crater itself". His angry expression turned worse "Blood should do the same!"

Extreme pain roared through my body as it became beyond cold. My body suddenly felt as though it was expanding in my body. Water expands when frozen, there must be water in blood, and Caleb was doing that to me. The water I was in froze, leaving me hallway out in the open, but ice formed on my body, creating a shell, and I suddenly felt very tired, like I wanted to go to sleep. The pain in my body dulled as something became horribly wrong. My blood was not flowing properly. Was it frozen?

I felt myself falling asleep. I wondered if this was how I died. The cold was giving away to warmth, but the danger was still there. I could feel it. The flash freeze was killing me, and I could not actually feel the cold anymore.

**BOOM!**

The ice I was in exploded, ejecting me and thrusting me into the air. The frigid air felt like I was being hit with my own flamethrower compared to what I was feeling before. My eyes snapped fully open as I woke up in instants. I did not wake up fast enough to land on my feet, however, instead landing right on my face.

"There are many ways I can take my revenge" Caleb said dully behind me, causing me to look up and see him "I could burn you to ashes, like you did every chance I had of going home. I could freeze you solid, just like my future has frozen. I could drown you, just like the hopelessness I have felt since arriving on your stupid world". He got closer as his words became angrier and more forceful.

"I could crush you with my mind on my own, smash you beyond recognition. I could vaporize you, or cause an explosion right inside your body. I could just tell you to die!" he screamed at me. He could. He had ultimate power here. He could take me apart with a single thought, but I had caused him unimaginable pain, would he do the same first?

He had lost it. Talking about the ways he could kill me. He had simply gone mad under the circumstances. I could never make myself blame him. He was too angry to control himself, and his anger…

Was it justified? Was I the one to have earned these attacks? What would Caleb tell me if he was in his right mind? "it's… Okay…" I groaned "Just… Take your… Anger out…"

"Shut up!" he yelled, blasting me away again. I skidded to a stop near the edge of the mountain. Before Caleb started talking again, I wondered where Amaterasu was. I hoped she had cleared out as she said she would. I did not want her to get hur"t or killed here.

The now familiar force holding me down came heavier, causing me to writhe in pain involuntarily. I yowled in pain involuntarily too. I was supposed to take this in silence, wait for him to come back, to realize what he was doing. Instead, the pain was removing my ability to even think clearly.

Only one thought was clear in my mind: Keep Caleb talking. Figure out everything that was going on in his head so that I can get him to at least save himself. I realized that I really did not care about myself. I just wanted Caleb to be safe.

Caleb began to comply. "You took everything from me! I was inches away, and after everything, I couldn't make myself do it! I had grown soft! And stupid! I betrayed my family and my friends and you know why!?" he shouted

"It's because you made me like this world! I tried to forget about it, about the state of my own world, I tried to ignore the beauty of this place, the evil, heart wrenching beauty that would doom me to be unable to leave considering the state of my own world! And **you**! You, Mightyena, and so many others did your best to make me see it. Because of that, because of you, I could not make myself go!" he shouted. A rumbling sounded beneath the ice, and two chunks of ice broke from the ground and floated near Caleb.

_Another piece of the puzzle… But that's not it, is it? There's more. _

He was not saying something. He was leaving something out. I needed to let him tell me on his own time. Get his anger out. He certainly seemed to want to vent some more anger, the way that the ice chunks shattered and revealed two ice swords of his design, spinning about in the air and then pointing at me. He controlled them with his mind.

"Take this!" he yelled, thrusting the massive blades right at me. I just let them hit. They were tough, and while the ice broke, both blades did a good job roughing me up. Blood was coming from my side. The wound was bad. The pain, however, was almost dull at this point. Why was it dull?

_Maybe I just don't care anymore…_

I now staggered to my paws as the swords whirled around in the air and pointed at me again. Another blow could kill me. Caleb seemed ready to deliver that blow. "Just fall!" he cried out, making the ice weapons soar towards me again.

This time, one stabbed the ground under me, and the other waited above me as the first lever flipped me into the air and the other one smashed me into the ice from above. More cuts appeared on my body. More blood hit the ground.

More blasts hit me as I tried to get to my paws. I was trying to stare him straight in the eyes. I wanted him to talk to me. Just keep him talking. Find out what I was missing. All I had gotten was that he liked this place more than he did his home, and he hated himself for it. I also knew that he blamed me for a lot of his troubles, a thought that was mostly true

What was I missing? I looked into his broken eyes, straight into his broken soul. Caleb. The person who always made everything better. He who always helped. Reduced to an angry soul looking for retribution for everything that has happened, with no one to blame but me, and himself.

_There I go with the poetry again…_

_Where is your mind now? Your impressive, brilliant mind. Where did that go?_

Caleb walked towards me again, hatred in his eyes. I stared him down best I could, but it was a weak attempt. Still, I tried. All I can possibly do is try. Caleb seemed to monologue so far when I did this. He managed not to disappoint me. "And after everything that happened in that ridiculous cave, you thought you could just pretend it didn't happen!" he shouted. That surprised me. Did he know? "I had a right to know what I did when everything slammed into darkness!" he practically screamed "I could only piece it together after you went and tried to pretend nothing had happened!"

"I tried to kill you all, and you refused to tell me about it! You **all **refused to tell me about it! How **dare **you keep that from me? How dare you decide what is right for me to hear and what is not right? Knowing that, I could be home right now! That would have decided everything! I could be back in my own world, having **not** betrayed my family! Having **not** betrayed my friends! Having **not **betrayed everything I ever knew. There is only one person I hate more than you, and that may be myself, but it doesn't matter. I know already. I figured it out, because that is what I do. That is my curse. Even the worst of things I can learn about just by putting pieces together and all I needed was to see the lies on your faces. All of you! Every one of you people who had the nerve to call themselves my friends! Every one of you lied to me, and even after that, I could not go. I could not do it. The fault lies with you! You and everything you have done to wind up here. Here, where I destroy you!"

He blasted me with pure, searing energy. The pain was intense, and as I tried to hold on, my vision grew blurry. I was winning. Who know winning would hurt so much? I could get Caleb to talk about his problems. Tell me why he was so angry. Maybe, just maybe, he would calm down in time to save himself.

_Just save yourself, Caleb. I don't care anymore if you kill me… Just save yourself…_

The next blast tossed me towards the center of the lake again. Sliding to a stop only after a full minute of sliding that impact had hurt, but it was not nearly as painful as some other things that had happened to me. That Caleb had done to me.

_Stop that. This is not Caleb. One more thought about how he is hurting me will make me forget that. Caleb is kind. Caleb is the absol I fell in love with. This is his body, but his mind is messed up. Only he can fix it. _

But how would I do that? How would I get him to realize what he was doing? Was I crazy for trying? Was he gone entirely? Did this matter?

_Shut up, Sarah. _

Damn. I was losing confidence, even though I had figured out more about why he stayed. I still needed more. I needed to know the answers to my questions, and I needed to know that he would be safe. I needed to know that…

Despair seemed to settle in my chest, despite everything I said to myself. I Wanted everything else I said I did, what else did I want? Why did I want anything else? What was there?

_Of course. I do want to be with Caleb. To do that… I have to survive. What should I do? Should I run, and try again later?_

No. I could never do that to Caleb. I owed him his life at least. I owed him to help him realize that it was not over for him.

_Oh, Caleb. I can at least imagine that you would love me someday had it never come to this. Imagining that we were together, dreaming that we could love each other instead of this one way stuff that seems to be happening to us. _

I sighed. Out loud. I did not try to stop it. Why not pretend that things were actually all right? Why not imagine the life I may have had with him had things gone the way I wanted to. He was not the type to give up. If he was, would I have fallen for him?

If he were not the type to try and do whatever he can to help, would I have fallen for him? If he were not the type to be strong in mind as well as body, would I have fallen for him?

No. It was the traits driving him towards home that I loved the most. If he had just given up, he would not be the same Caleb. He would be completely different. I would see him completely different. If he changed, who would he be? Would be someone I could love?

I had made a commitment did I not? If he was never the same, it was my job to fix that, or accept it. If I survived. If we survived. Resolve appeared in my heart, among all of the pain. If I could not save Caleb before he killed me, at least I would die making him see that it would be all right.

_Boy, am I a pessimist. Shut up about death. _

Now I was trying to lighten the mood for myself. How pointless was that? Hope was a foreign concept for me at this point. What good was hope when Caleb was doing his best to die, doing his best to take me down.

Caleb's swords spun about around him. His scowl seemed different. Changed. Maybe him talking about what was wrong was causing him to think about it rationally, just as he used to. The rational thinking that brought about his understanding of what he was forced to do when he was infected by darkness. He had figured that out, with little to no information. Just the looks we were giving him had been enough.

Which was so impressive. He was a genius. A conflicted, awesome genius. I knew that was at least part of the reason I loved him. I needed the rest I needed to know, at least before he killed me. Just that. "Caleb… Tell me… Why-"

"Just die already!" he screamed, not hearing me at all, throwing his swords at me at top speeds. I prepared myself for death, but something odd happened. Just as the blades were going to kill me, they vanished. Caleb's eyes widened "What the hell?!" he yelled in disbelief, before he raised his head and caused the ice around me to rise in chunks, and he prepared to crush me. Once again, the killing blow seemed to glance off of something around me. He growled.

His next attack struck just as I thought I was safe for the moment, pain erupting in my entire body, causing me to jitter as some force damaged my insides. I screamed, but the pain would not kill me, for now. The killing blows deflected away for some reason.

Why? Why would any blow that could kill me just disappear or deflect? Why now? Is… is it because inside, he doesn't want to kill me? Is there something left of the person I came to love so quickly?

"Why won't you just die!?" he yelled, making the pain worse. I screamed as my insides felt like they were being torn apart. Finally, I collapsed. I coughed, and plenty of blood came out of my mouth. The sight of that red coloring caught my eye quite easily. Caleb charged an attack that looked like an incredibly large hyper beam, and tried to obliterate me. It veered away.

Why was it doing this? Why was I alive? What was causing me to survive his attacks, of his attacks to break against me or veer away from me. What was going on?

"Why can't I kill you!?" Caleb cried out, raising his paw into the air in front of him, and with a mighty **SHANK! **a massive shadow claw erupted from his claws. He tried to cut me to ribbons in a mindless rage. They faded away just as they were going to cut me apart. As for me, I laid there in shock. Why could his attacks no longer hit me?

He blasted me away. That seemed to be working, but it seemed to me that attacks that would kill me would not even touch me. I hacked out more blood. My insides were probably heavily damaged. Sliding out on sharp ice was painful, but it would not kill me.

But hope had soared through me now, for many, many reasons. The first was because Caleb could not kill me, and that had many meanings. I could only hope that what was left of him did not want to harm me. There may be another reason, but hope was still soaring through my heart at the moment. I also thought that maybe now, I had a chance of saving him, saving both of us.

"Why?!" he yelled at me "why can't I kill you!? I make the decisions here! I control this place! You invade the only home I have left, and now you control it!?"

_Oh, dear. He thinks i'm doing it. _

If he was doing it, he was doing it without his own knowledge. Amaterasu was nowhere to be seen, and I suppose that we would notice if time kept freezing. "It's not-" I tried to say, but Caleb seemed to get a kick out of interrupting me today.

"Shut your mouth!" he snarled, pressing me against the floor again. This time, he pressed harder and harder. It was like gravity itself bent to his will, and crushed me. As Caleb drew nearer, the pain grew until I was groaning as much as I could with my entire body being squished. I would have been screaming in pain. Now that I had something to try and achieve, the pain was no longer dull and ignorable. Instead, I wanted to live with all my heart, because I knew that there must be a way to save Caleb.

I knew there was something in Caleb keeping him from harming me, and I was pretty sure it was himself. He was fighting himself, and he was losing right now. But, I had to get him back. I needed to.

_I must…_

"You always considered yourself so important, you arrogant absol!" Caleb yelled at me "Your arrogance is only matched by stupidity, thinking you could come here of all places, and destroy me like you so clearly intend to, just like you did before!"

He was wrong. I was trying to save him. My actions before, they had been signs of arrogance and stupidity, and enchanting love, but here I was, having come to save him from himself, and he thought I was doing more of the same.

_He has a right to think I would do that… In a way, I guess I am doing it for selfish reasons. I want to be with Caleb. My Caleb. Is that so bad?_

Bad or not, it was certainly selfish. It was definitely arrogant of me to think that there would be no problem, just walking into a dream and thinking that everything would be all right, that Caleb would just be there, smiling and waiting for me to tell him it was time to go home. I should have known that he was in more trouble than that when I first learned of his sleeping.

So what had I been thinking? I had been thinking that I could just do this with no problem. I thought a few sweet words would bring Caleb back, but everything I had imagined had gone wrong. I had been attacked several times, and now Caleb himself was attacking me, blaming me for everything that had happened to him. In some cases, it was my fault. In other cases… He wanted someone to blame.

_Someone to blame. Someone other than him. He is blaming himself, and wants to blame me instead. _

Poor Caleb. He was so lost, so destroyed, that he was not thinking clearly anymore, but the only coherent thoughts he seemed to hold on to was what had happened and how unfair it was. It was hard to fight someone who was clearly correct. For the most part. I certainly could not fight him.

_I could fight him… I just won't. _

I built every ounce of resolve in my body. It was time to find out everything that I needed to. I had to do it… For Caleb. That was, I realized, what I had been lacking in my attempts to keep him with me. The understanding of what Caleb needs. Not just what I need.

With every ounce of strength I owned, I got onto my belly and slowly pushed myself up. My legs shaking, my body trying desperately to slam into the ground again, I stood up and looked Caleb in the eye.

Caleb did not miss it. "What the hell?!" he cursed, and the pressure on me became greater. I withstood it, because I had to. I tried to speak, but something was wrong in my body at the moment. My voice had been damaged. I could only whisper.

"This… Isn't… You…" I whispered through gritted teeth. Caleb's fury strengthened in his eyes. "Shut up!" he screamed. Whenever he did that, I got blasted away. This time, however, he simply smashed me into the ground harder until I could no longer take it, smashing me straight down. That could have broken my legs. As it was, it felt like some other bones, like my ribs, were about to snap.

The pain was immense, causing me to scream in pain. After about five seconds, it stopped only to have myself smacked around into my back. Caleb held me down with one paw, smacking me repeatedly with his other paw. His claws put deep gashes in my face. "Why can't you just die!?" he yelled, his claws red with my blood "Why can't I kill you!?"

His shadow claw move tried to hit me, but only his normal claws could actually harm me. He kept trying though. He was desperate, hurt, driven mad by his anger and hatred. Against me, against others, against himself. I think that above all else, he blamed himself.

That was my window, to get to him. It hurt, but I had to do this to him. I had to hurt him so bad that he may be stunned into silence. Maybe it won't feel so bad when I see him think about it. If I see him think about it. Caleb drew his paw up for a finishing blow, another massive shadow claw prepared. Even if the attack could not kill me, it was possible that Caleb himself could with his normal claws.

"No one deserves to die" I quoted "You said that once, right?" I whispered, coughing as some blood went into my mouth. I coughed some more as Caleb prepared to slash me apart. I closed my eyes.

_It's all over… After surviving everything, I just survive long enough to try and get him to see sense. Wake up, Caleb. _

Silence. The feeling of pain seemed to fade into the background. Dull silence came about. Was I dead? Was I finally dying? Had my luck run out now? Lucking out against Mightyena, and then Caleb, then Riley, then Sheila, and Caleb again. Luck was my weapon. I had just lost it.

Something hit my face. It was a light impact. What was it? Whatever it was, it rolled down my cheek. It stung my wounds. I tried to make sense of it. What was happening?

"...Ah…"

The voice of Caleb reached my ears. It sounded like a cough of sorts. I slowly, painfully opened my eyes. my vision was mostly red, and a stinging sensation was in my eyes. I had blood in my eyes. I blinked them away as fast as I could.

Caleb's shadow claw was still activated, but his paw was hovering in the air, not moving. I looked at his face. His teeth were gritted. His eyes were open, and a single tear was in his right eye. A tear. That was what I had been hit with. Not a killing blow, a single tear. "I…" Caleb whispered. His eyes… They no longer had the fire of blind rage. They still looked broken, thought. He was still an emotional wreck.

_An emotional wreck… Just like I am. _

Caleb may never be the same, but the danger had gone in an instant. It astonished me how quickly it had happened. For the first time since I have known him, he was at a loss for words. He was staring at my bloodied face, realizing what he was doing. I felt horrible, probably because I had so ruthlessly reminded him of when I had almost died earlier.

"I…" Caleb said again, and something new appeared in his eyes. Shame. He was ashamed of what he had done to me. He was coming back. Caleb. My Caleb. My dear Caleb was coming back. I was crying in happiness.

"You…" he stammered, noticing my tears. One of his own tears hit my face. Suddenly, he lurched off of me and staggered away, his shadow claw blowing away like smoke. He stumbled for a second or two before promptly collapsing.

The clouds stopped dropping red lightning. Instead, it began to rain. the pain i felt began to subside slowly as the rain fell against me. I blinked. What was happening?

Any bones that had broken were mending. Why was I being healed? Was this entire place just coming back to life or something? Was the dream itself rewarding me for saving Caleb, or were Caleb's emotions healing me?

I waited, thinking it was a trick for a moment, but that paranoia subsided. Caleb was over in the ground beside me. He was sobbing to himself, completely broken down. Crying there. He could not go through this by himself. It was not my desire that drove me now, it was his need. Maybe that was what love actually meant. Even as I thought this, though, I knew that my basic desire would cause me to be much more needy than I should be, and it would take a lot of self control to change that. Self control that I did not have.

I slowly got up, wincing at the pain in my chest. My bones were still mending. I limped over to Caleb. He looked so broken down. It was heart wrenching. I neared him now, and stayed right next to him. If he noticed me, he gave no sign that he did for about five minutes.

"I-I can't believe…" he tried, and broke down again. Now I smiled kindly as I went to help him. "It's all right, Caleb" I said softly, soothingly "It's alright. it's over now".

His tear filled eyes, normally so impassive and professional, moved to look at me. "...How can you say that?" he asked weakly "I tried to… I wanted to…" he stammered weakly

"Shhh" I interrupted "It doesn't matter". Caleb was disbelieving. "I blamed you… I was so bitter… I was so angry… How…". Caleb continued crying. My heart broke looking at him.

"Why..?" he asked finally, dropping his head to the ice "Why... did it have to be me? Why is it me to be stuck in this stupid world? Why not someone who hasn't spent their lives working to advance himself and those around him? Why not someone who had no life? Why not someone who had no future, or someone who would trade their world for this one in a heartbeat? Why me, who doesn't deserve this? Who had something to live for?"

I stared at him. Now he was mourning himself. It made sense at this point for him to do that. However, he had no idea how lucky he was. As far as I could tell, his world was full of terrible things and events. Wars. Death. Terrible things.

I placed a paw gently on his shoulder "Hey" I said gently, prompting him to look up at me again. "You asked 'why you?' and I don't think that makes sense. Your world… So many things are wrong with it, right?"

Caleb was silent, clearly wondering what I was getting at. Tears still slipped down his cheeks. My job today was to mend his heart and mind. The fight was over. My luck had basically won me six fights to the death, and i'll be darned if Caleb still falls anyways. Caleb began to tell me a story now.

"I-I was going to go through… After everything that had happened, everything that I knew I was leaving behind, even knowing how wonderful this place was… I was going to go through. I had a d-duty to my family…" he said. One of the major things he was angry about failing to do. The reason he was angry with himself.

"I betrayed them…" Caleb continued in a moan "none of them will ever see me again…"

I was having none of that "Please, Caleb" I said "tell me the rest". Caleb blinked. He was not used to me acting like that. Usually I was as good as possible around him, but he needed to get this out of his system if he ever wanted to get himself back to normal. The problem was, he had no intention of returning to normal. It was my job to make him do so.

"...I was so close… I had to take one more step, but doubts kept flying through my mind. Doubts about how things would go when I returned filled my mind… It had been a month… They would likely have assumed I was dead by then… There… There would be so much trouble if I showed up like that…"

Caleb took a deep, shaking breath before continuing. "I would never be trusted again, because I had no story to tell. People in my world, I would have been laughed into a mental hospital if I told the truth. The only explanation was that I ran away, and I would never be trusted by anyone again…"

Caleb grimaced "And then if I had already been declared dead, my family would be beyond repair even if I was with them… And then… And then-". Caleb choked at that. I was listening, and I was patient, possibly for the first time in my life. I had to relax him.

A good way to relax someone… That would be the way you relax anyone of course. I had no idea if it worked for humans, but I could try. I moved my paw to his back, between the shoulder blades, and rubbed him there. To my dismay, he stiffened instead. To my relief, after ten seconds, he started to relax. However, it did not work as much as it should have done.

"Guh…" he muttered "enough". I immediately stopped. Hope flashed again as I realized that Caleb had just said something in his normal voice, slightly irritated and almost monotone. He was coming back.

"Keep talking, Caleb" I prompted him "tell me what you need to". Caleb took a deep breath. His voice was still shaky, and tears reappeared in his eyes as he began to talk again. "When I was going to decide that I could handle the distrust and notion of being dead… I-I realized that there was no reason to believe that I would actually become human when I left…"

My eyes widened at that. **Of course**. It makes sense. Caleb would never have succeeded if he did not become human when he went home. Caleb began to explain why. "I first realized that after everything I did to get home, if I stayed an absol the only thing waiting for me would be a metal cage…"

My eyes widened even more. A cage? He would have been trapped in a cage by humans? Just how bad were humans!? "That's if I did not get hunted down by some guy with a gun".

_Hunted with a gun? Whatever a gun is, it clearly means killing. They would do that to him!?_

"If I managed to get humans to realize that I was intelligent, unlike what they would assume, they would make all sorts of poor decisions. I would get slammed into a zoo for one, the humans talking about 'protecting' me from whatever 'killed' the rest of my species, having assumed that I was the only one. I could not exactly say I had been human…"

I did not know what a 'zoo' was, but I could assume that it was bad, and because he mentioned protection sarcastically, it probably meant isolation. Isolation in a cage because of stupid humans. Was Caleb really the only good human out there or something?

Caleb answered that for me after about five seconds of silence. "Not every human would have done that to me, but enough of them are like that for one of those things to happen to me". Caleb took a shuddering breath "And finally, this place… I never had dreams as a human. If I became human again, what would happen to this place? It could die if I left…"

Caleb's eyes were still looking emotionally shattered, but there was a little clarity in them. I spoke up now. "And you want to die now? This place… It's going to disappear as soon as you die. After all that thinking, Caleb. You were too angry to think it all the way through, and you know what? The anger you had is understandable".

Caleb stared at me, horror and realization dawning in his eyes. He had been hurt by that, and hurting him hurt me, but I could tell that he had not thought of that at all. Now I had to cheer him up, and it could possibly be the hardest thing I have ever done. "You asked 'why me' earlier, Caleb. As far as either of us are concerned, it was probably dumb luck".

His eyes never left my face while I talked. I wanted him to understand that life here was so much better than life in his old world, that mourning his lost life will not make this one disappear. "Good luck. For me, it was all I could have asked for. Honestly, Caleb, I think that it was good luck for you, too. Life here, it's clearly hundreds of times better than that human world" I said "You act like you don't deserve this change as if this place is somehow worse. The truth is, Caleb, that you **do **deserve this. You deserve to have an easy life. You **deserve **to be in this beautiful world".

Caleb's face was for once completely unreadable. "Caleb, after everything you have done, all the good things you have done, all of the things you have sacrificed to make things easier for yourself and others… You may have come here by accident and for no apparent reason, but Caleb… This is **gift**. You've **earned** it. Everything is done now. Just relax. Everything will turn out alright, Caleb" I finished soothingly. Caleb was silent. He was still silent. His eyes closed, and the tears continued to flow.

I stood there, just watching him. Caleb was crying, which was such an impossibility in the eyes of others, but here he was, mourning what he lost, but now, I got the sense that I had finally done it. I had finally saved Caleb. His shuddering breaths the only sound beyond the rain. Speaking of, the both of us were soaked. The salty rain only made things feel more somber.

pools of water were filling the ice, and to my surprise, the ice level began to sink as the ice apparently began melting. Being near the edge, it appeared we would not be stranded. Along with the ice melting, water was coming up over the edge, disobeying the laws of physics, and pooling back into the former lake. Caleb had said this thing used to be a lake inside of a crater.

It took almost an hour before the lake seemed back to normal, most of the ice completely gone. The toothlike structures around the mountain having disappeared. I felt that it had a sort of finality to it. The rain eventually tricked slower, prompting me to look at Caleb.

The best person in the world was falling asleep.

I smiled at him. He looked peaceful once more. Sleep was something he needed after all this. Technically he was already asleep, but he was exhausted. He needed rest.

_The rain is stopping. The sun is coming out, and this place is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. _

Caleb's breathing became normal, uniform, and he was finally asleep. I drew closer to him, with the intent of getting him off the ice.

"Lets see the view" I whispered as I gently picked him up and hefted him away. It was clear how tired he was considering he did not even wake up. I looked back to see the lake as I climbed, noting how much it sparkled in the sun, and noting the island in the side of the lake, and finally noting the fact that the air was not warm, welcoming, just like it must have been.

Eventually, slowly, I got to the top. The view of Caleb's little world took my breath away as I set Caleb down gently. The blue lake glittered in the sun, the trees and small amounts of grass turning the place green, and yet there were cliffs of stone providing contrast to the brilliant green.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" a voice said, making me jump and my fur bristle. I whirled into a combat stance to face… Amaterasu. "Ammy!" I exclaimed "I thought you were another enemy I had to fight!"

Amaterasu gave me a look of loathing. "Why do you call me that?" she asked as calmly as possible. I winced at that. "Uh… It's just faster to say and… You know…"

Amaterasu sighed in annoyance. "I must congratulate you, Sarah. You have returned the beauty to this place" she said. I smiled down at the sleeping Caleb "I don't care as much for the sights. I just had to save Caleb".

She looked down at Caleb, her impassive face looking at him. "Did he not try to kill you?" she asked "you confuse me, Sarah. His defeat brought this place back to it's former state, no?"

"No" I told her a bit harshly "I saved him. I got him back to normal, and this place also went back to normal. If Caleb had actually been able to kill me… For some reason his killing blows could not hurt me, and I think deep down he did not really want to do it. He will be able to wake up soon. Things will go back to normal for us… Eventually"

"I am sorry" Amaterasu said "I now understand. I wish you the best of luck in your journey, Sarah".

"Thank you" I said with a smile. With that, Amaterasu leapt towards the water. As she neared the water, time froze and Amaterasu did something in front of the water before vanishing in a flash of light. I wondered what she did. Then, I dropped it.

I came back to where Caleb lied and curled up next to him. He would move away when he woke, but I felt the need to do so anyways. His warmth met me again, and I wished he was awake and willing to do this. I clearly was getting ahead of myself, but the warmth I got to enjoy…

So I waited for Caleb to wake up, watching now the world below the mountain. The house down there, the forests and the meadows… Everything was nice. Everything was quiet.

_Just sleep for a while, Caleb._

* * *

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

…

_Light? Such a bright light…_

_Where… Where am I now? Some deeper nightmare? _

_Sarah… I tried to kill her… What the hell is wrong with me? _

_Sarah said I was good enough to deserve something better… How can she say that after I tried to kill her in my anger? She's wrong. I don't deserve it. I was willing to take revenge. How could I have done that? _

_It's my human side… I know that no pokemon would do that for a reason like that… No human deserves something like this, certainly not me…_

There was a warmth against me. I knew it was Sarah immediately. I was too tired of everything, too tired of existence as a whole to move. Maybe I could just pretend to be asleep until I happened to starve. That had been my goal, after all.

_Sleeping is a good idea. Maybe I should sleep more than I did. Maybe I should just relax…_

_My life… what is it worth? I almost killed Sarah, probably twice if she was around when I became the same monster Mightyena did. Why would they try and keep that from me? I deserved to know._

_Why would Sarah say that I deserved this place, this better place, considering I tried to kill her on sight? _

_A human does not deserve to be here. I don't deserve to be here. I wish…_

_I wish I had never been human, that I had been born and raised here. That I never knew what the human world was. Is it bad to wish that?_

Now I thought about Sarah. She had saved me, comforted me, reminded me who I was supposed to be. Who I was, that was a monster. Who I wanted to be, that's how I acted. Sarah had reminded me of that, and it was like my eyes had focused in an instant on her face, bloodied and badly damaged. It had broken me.

After that, she had started to comfort me, calming me down by **petting **me, and even though after the surprise I felt myself relaxing, it still reminded me that I am basically a dog now. I had told her to stop, because I feared my stress would beat the relaxing feeling from being rubbed on the back.

Why should I believe that I deserved to be in this beautiful, wonderful world after trying to kill Sarah and having nearly killed the others before? Why do I deserve it? Now my humanity itself is at risk. Who I am…

I needed to think, but something was making me lose some focus. It was Sarah. Pressed against me, she was impeding my ability to focus. I needed to get out of here right now. I wondered if Sarah was asleep and if I could sneak away. I shifted slightly, and Sarah moved in response. She was wide awake, and now she would be staring right at me.

I just had to go. I stood up, avoided Sarah's gaze, and tried to walk away. "Caleb, don't go" Sarah called "stay nearby. You need to talk things out, Caleb". I frowned with my back turned. Thoughts whirled around my head, then, I realized that despite the obvious undertones of 'i need you', there was some wisdom in what she had said. How was I going to handle my problems without talking to anybody? Maybe that was what I was missing in the past, talking about the problems I have.

I turned around slowly, and met her blue eyes. She looked very hopeful, and her expression turned to one of euphoria when I came back and sat down about a yard away from her. To my surprise, she did not try to get closer. Maybe I had scared her more than she let on.

"Talk to me, Caleb" she said gently "tell me whatever you need to, and understand that this world wants you to stick around, alright?"

I thought about it. I really did not want to show my face to the people I had nearly killed, but did I want to die? No. Not anymore. The real question was whether I believed the others were safe with me gone. Did I believe that the danger would be gone if I was no longer a part of their lives?

The danger could have come from anywhere, really. A sequence of unfortunate events led to the near deaths of everyone I came to care about. I picked up the crystal that turned out to react to emotions, particularly the evil intent that was amplified and turned Mightyena and I into monsters. I had no way of knowing it was like that.

I wanted to blame myself for that, but it was not really my fault at this point. The only thing I could blame myself for was failing to go home, and I truly had decent reasons to. I should have gone anyways, I should have gone to see my family, even if I was still an absol, tell them what happened, explain the situation, **if **I managed to find them.

It was over now, all of it. The battle was over. I was stuck in this world, but as I thought of it now, I realized that one thing I wanted was to avoid causing pain to the people I was leaving behind by isolating myself. If I died…

They would never recover. Things like this never happen in the pokemon world. If it did, there would be no recovery. I had been hating myself for betraying my family, was I really about to betray everyone else too?

Waking up would be the best for everyone. Including me, my friends… And the dream world. This place would have died if I died. It broke my heart when I realized that when I had finished attacking Sarah. Sarah wanted me to talk about it. She wanted me to talk about everything.

_Should I tell her? Yes, yes I should. _

I told the story from start to finish, told her everything I needed to so that I could get it off my new fur covered chest. Sarah was an excellent listener, despite her impatience otherwise. I found it easy to tell her what the problem was. As I spoke to her, I silently vowed to remember that there was her to talk to when I had a problem and had to talk to somebody.

She was a good friend in this way, and she was willing to save me even after I tried to kill her. I knew that she wanted to be more than a friend, so much that she was willing to keep me in this world. I intended to trap her in the friendzone for the moment.

_Listen to me, using such phrases. _

I was losing what I was, the professional person. I would not dare let that happen. I have lost so much, and if I lost myself, I really would be gone, even if I was alive. Sarah would try to get me to be with her until she found someone else, if she ever did.

After I finished, her smile stayed unwavering. Explaining every difficulty I have ever had here felt excellent. "I'm very sorry about what we put you through, Caleb" she said. She at least sounded legitimate. "You know…" Sarah started, dragging a claw through the dirt in front of her "I've had some questions for you for a while…"

She seemed hesitant, but she had graced me with her newfound ability to listen. I needed to do the same for her. "Go on" I urged "there is no need to be hesitant. Ask me what you need to".

Sarah nodded. "All right. First and biggest: I want to know… Well, I don't know why I fell in love with you so quickly, barely knowing you at the time. Now that I know you, knowing who you are, my feelings grew tenfold! But I don't understand why I fell in love with you that quickly" she said. I understood exactly why, and now she was confused.

"I know you have lived a lot of your life without friends" I started "The basic term for what you felt for so long is 'loneliness'. If someone is lonely, and they meet someone who will actually talk to them after so long in isolation, they tend to become attached. That is a human scenario, but many pokemon show similar mental capabilities and tendencies as a human. You developed affections for me because of that loneliness, and then things escalated from there".

Sarah looked down towards the forests. "Hmmmm…" she said. I had a feeling she was thinking about whether she would be able to let things go someday. Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, but hey, Optimism is something I am lacking at the moment. In fact, I was always lacking in optimism. Maybe I should fix that.

"Anything else you wanted to know?" I asked the female absol. She nodded. "When I was fighting Riley, he sort of took off his outer layer of fur when I burned it…"

I laughed. Sarah's eyes widened at the sound, and I was astonished by the fact that I had managed a laugh. I was even more astonished (and a little worried) that Sarah had made me laugh so easily. "Oh, yes. See, humans don't have much hair on their bodies. They use clothes to stay warm and use protection, stuff that they can take off and put on at any point. Riley's coat is built for warmth. If it gets too warm, he can just take it off" I said.

"Er…" Sarah tried to say something, but she had nothing to say. "Oh well… I want to know: Who else lives here?" she asked.

"Oh, like Riley? I guess Sheila is around now… Unless you somehow managed to take her out… No, I reckon you escaped her somehow" I explained, somewhat unwilling to tell her about the two child absol. Sarah looked me in the eyes. "Sheila's upside down somewhere in the mountain" she informed me "Tried to blow me up. Several times. Doesn't listen to reason, that one".

"Oh… I'm sorry about that. She is a machine after all, and I suppose it was a bit of a rush job I did. I can probably improve her on the way out" I said. She smirked at that. "It was thanks to Ammy that I survived at all" she said.

_Ammy?_

"Hang on, who?" I asked. Someone else was around who I did not know?

"Amaterasu" she said, triggering a memory of mine "She just showed up in the forest near this mirror thing. Said that some other memories of yours just popped into existence around the place".

Popped into existence? "Must have been because of my instability. Not being able to control my thoughts properly. I can be glad that something good came about as a result" I responded. Sarah nodded "Ammy was really good at fighting. All I was able to do was heal her" she said. She called her 'ammy', which is the nickname of amaterasu in the game. Interesting. I wondered now if my memories if it had affected Sarah somehow while she was talking to Amaterasu. I needed to meet her at some point. I needed to meet any new faces around this place.

"I'm glad she helped you" I said truthfully. I really wanted to make things up to her. I definitely would be nicer of course, having no reason to push anyone away anymore. I would not dare go so far as to pretend that I was **falling **for her. Oh, no. That would be beyond embarrassing, and outright lying to her would make me feel terrible.

"I am too. Sheila was a bit aggressive" she said. She seemed to almost say more, but stopped herself. I guess she was going to say something about it being my orders that caused that. She would have been right. She did not because hurting my feelings was something she did not want to do.

I nodded. "Anything else?" I asked. Sarah nodded this time. "Riley was protecting that house even though you were here instead. Who is actually in there?"

That was a question I did not want to answer for a moment. Eventually, I decided that I owed Sarah. "If you talk about the dream to others, which I prefer you not do, I do want you to keep this a secret at least" I told her. She nodded, realizing things were going to get a bit serious.

I took a deep breath. "When I first found myself dreaming, considering that I normally never have dreams, I was not the only thing there. It started as an endless field of grass that I turned into this place. What else was there… Two people. They were kids, young ones, and they were both absol" I said. Sarah's eyes widened when I said that. "I have no idea why they were there, but they certainly led to me building this all. They-" I cut myself off.

"Yes?" Sarah asked. I breathed out and took another breath. "They were child versions of me and… The other one seemed to be a child version of you, Sarah. I don't have any idea why they were there" I said.

Sarah drank that in. I regretted saying that last bit, considering that she would **definitely **take that the wrong way. Sarah broke into a grin. "I know why" she said in a manner that made me want to flee as fast as I could. She leaned towards me, making me lean away.

"Now listen here-" I started.

"Shut up, Caleb" she said, smiling "you know I could never help myself. You will always have to run away from me". I regained my composure. "You try to jump me, your face will become best friends with the ground **real **fast" I threatened.

Sarah was not taking me seriously. She crouched into a feline pouncing position, her tail wagging, and said: "Best get that over with then" she said, smiling.

* * *

Five minutes later, I had her face against the ground with one paw, holding her there, having not moved at all otherwise. I was actually rather amused. "I just need my space for the moment" I said down at her. Sarah tried to say something, trying to pull away. I let her go at the right moment for her to tumble back, bringing about a mental chuckle. "How could I give you space if you hold me down?" she asked wryly. I sighed. "Enough of that. If we are going to get you out of here, we need to get you to where you came in" I said.

"You are coming with me" Sarah insisted, apparently sensing some hesitation there. "Of course" I said "Don't worry, this is over. This won't ever happen again, I assure you" I said. With that, I turned and began to walk down the mountain.

_Time to make the journey back to the guild… I had better start calling it home, I guess._

_Time to make the journey back... Home. My new life begins right now._

* * *

**Hello, everybody! This is Hyperjade. I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. Review, follow, favorite if you want to. **

**Please review, actually, i would love to know how i have done with this story so far, because book one is nearing completion. As soon as book one has ended, work on book two will begin immediately, so i need a few things. First and foremost, i need review for this story telling me what i can improve on and what i am doing well. I would love character bios. Thank you, guest and Nopemanor for the characters you have sent me. **

**Please send character bios you have to me in a personal message, primarily to avoid spoilers in the review section for others reading the story. Thank you. **

**Thank you all for all the support i have received for this story. I appreciate every review, every character bio, and every suggestion sent to me. Have a nice day, everyone, and i will see you next chapter!**

**-Hyperjade**

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	31. Chapter Thirty One: Resolution

**Hello, Everybody, Jango here! Came to talk about things, read this paper... One review huh? Excellent that we got one at least... Seriously though, guys and gals, review please. Thank you to AlexisGrimm for the review, Hyperjade says thank you, and that he is glad he was able to surprise you. I say i am just glad that somebody reviewed the story! **

**Enjoy this chapter! Major exposition here! Hyperjade will explain some more things at the end here (unless he forgets and i have to whack him on the head). He also hopes you enjoy the chapter too. **

**Right then. I have to go. Bye!**

* * *

**Chapter 31: Resolution**

**⻤Nincada's POV⻤**

I wandered about in the mystifying forest. After some discussion with another team which had been wanting to take another job at the amp plains, I had taken a job in the mystifying forest instead. I had done it, but I had decided (for some reason) to try and find the end of this place.

I was trying to preoccupy myself from thinking about Caleb. That was probably why I decided to keep going. Getting to the depths of the forest was easy enough, digging about until I found a staircase. I had to fight a few times, just trying to get out of the ground and up the stairs. Grass types simply can't handle bug types, however.

So I kept moving through the place, going from room after room. Digging through the walls made things quicker than walking or digging along corridors. I tried not to think about the situation at hand, but I ultimately failed.

I had to wonder what was going to happen now that Caleb was in a serious predicament. Sarah was on her way to save him, but would he want saving from her? He was unlikely to come back with Sarah being the one to find him.

Perhaps it was for the best if Caleb found somewhere else to make his new life, away from the rest of us. Caleb seemed the type to enjoy isolation. Maybe he would rather find some snow covered mountain in the middle of nowhere in some other continent that is completely uninhabited and just stay there.

Someone as destroyed as he looked might like something like that. I had seen the look in his eyes. The shattered glass look that made his appearance look so much different. It was at that point when I saw him that I realized no matter what happened, the poor guy would never be the same.

I knew I was nearing the end of the dungeon, and I wondered what was there. More treasure? We did not need any at this point. Another dungeon entrance? Would have heard about it by this point. Nothing? Would not surprise me.

The dungeon ended eventually, but there was still a path to follow, so I did follow it. I did so above ground this time, though it probably would have been faster to dig. The grass was short here, so I could see.

I eventually came to a pool of water at the end of the path. The scene looked serene, yet deserted. A single beam of light shone down into the center of the pond. It looked unnaturally bright, more so than the sunlight should have been. I viewed the place, wondering what significance it had, if any at all.

I noted that the place was symmetrical. There was a rock on either side and near the back, and they mirrored each other perfectly. The ground around the water did the same. The spring was not deep at all, only a few inches deep.

The light was warm, welcoming. I was very suspicious then, because I thought that I was being affected by it in some way. Eventually, though, I decided that there was no danger. I was reluctant to touch the water, but to my surprise the water brought no discomfort, on the contrary to normal.

After I realized this I moved forward into the water. As I neared the light, I was stopped short by a seemingly disembodied voice with no apparent gender. I froze at what it said.

"You who seek awakening…" it said, it echoing voice reaching my ears several times. "This is the Luminous Spring. Do you wish to evolve?"

_Evolve? There's another way to evolve? I thought you had to get really strong for that to happen…_

I thought about this. If I evolved, what would change? I knew that a ninjask was a flying bug type instead of a ground bug type, so water would no longer be a problem. I knew that lightning would hurt really bad. I also knew that evolving would bring about an ability to get faster over time, making me nearly untouchable if I remained in battle for a long time.

I could do this right here, right now. Being a ninjask sounded rather good, actually. I could fly about, moving fast, not needing to ride on Sarah anymore, or someone else, like how I had to catch a ride from a guild member going north. I would never need to do that again, and on top of everything, I would be stronger, more capable of fighting.

"Yes" I heard myself say. The voice came resonating through the air again. "Then step into the light".

I did so, prompting the spring to speak again. "Do you need an item to evolve?" Did I need an item to evolve, like an evolution stone? "No, no I don't think so…" I said. I was uncertain, having not really spent so much time learning about evolution.

"So be it… Seeker of awakening… Let us begin" the place said, and the beam of light grew brighter around me. I waited for change to just happen, but something else needed to be decided.

"You have a choice, Seeker of Awakening" the thing said. I wondered why it was calling me that. Maybe that was just the title used for any pokemon here. I let the voice continue. "You will evolve into two pokemon at once. It is your choice which shall contain your memories and personality".

"Two?" I asked, confused. I had never heard of a second evolution possibility for us. It had said two at once, but I had to choose one that would contain my memories?

"The first is Ninjask" the spring explained "The second is Shedinja". What the heck was a shedinja? I had never heard of one before. It was apparently a second evolution of a nincada, but I have never heard of one or even seen one. Should I choose to become a shedinja instead of a ninjask?

_I don't know what this is. Maybe I should be safe…_

Except… Except that I felt some need to prove myself. Since I had met Caleb and Sarah, I had wanted to show strength more, and was more willing to put myself in danger or uncertain situations. Why should I not evolve into a shedinja? It was an evolution of mine, meaning that it would clearly be stronger than I was now.

_Shedinja it is. I can do this. _

"I will become a shedinja" I said. The spring did not say anything for a moment, but the light brightened around me. "Very well" the spring said "let us begin". There was a brilliant glow and several flashes, and feeling left my body as I knew I was changing.

_This is how it begins… I am changing, evolving. Here goes…_

* * *

**⻤Shedinja's POV⻤**

Silence.

There was no noise save for the sound of the spring bubbling, but I paid it no heed. There was no feeling at all. I tried to feel something, anything, but there was nothing. The sound of the spring even sounded weird, like my ears were different. The change had stopped about five minutes ago.

The second the light died down, I saw a ninjask fly away at top speeds. This meant that I was a shedinja now, instead of a ninjask. The problem was, I had no idea how to handle my new body. My vision was odd. In fact, I thought about moving forward, and something appeared in my field of view.

It appeared like my vision was not attached to my body or something. The thing in front of me was the center of my vision, and when I tried to turn my body, that thing moved. I had no idea my vision would be disembodied or anything. I tried to look around, but my vision instead moved about what was apparently my new body. I finally managed to look forward.

This took plenty of concentration to pull off, because I was controlling my new body with thoughts. I had to simultaneously move my body and my sight at the same time. I took a look at my body now. Being behind it, I realized that there was a gaping hole in it's back. The body was hollow. It floated absolutely still unless I commanded it to move, and even then the parts of it's body never really moved, it just changed locations by floating about.

After some practice, I mastered moving. I realized that any attempt I had made to work on how good I was at sensing vibrations was probably worthless at this point. What could I do with this? I was not fast, I could feel nothing physically, and I had no idea what I could do.

I did not even feel properly alive anymore. There was no insides in this shell, and yet I could move it. I realized that I must have actually become a ghost pokemon.

_A ghost and bug type? I have never heard of such a combination. _

As a ghost type, I had to be able to do ghostly things. I imagined abilities that some ghosts have. A shadow ball? Some energy built up but it dissipated. I needed to practice new techniques. Disappearing?

Before my very eyes, my body faded right out of existence. I imagined it coming back, and it complied. I was impressed at this, now I could vanish at will. I could move faster than I used to as well, floating was better than walking on tiny legs and claws.

My badge was still on my shell of a body. I would use it to teleport back to the guild when I needed to. For now, I could learn how to use my own body. If I tried to speak, it would come out of the shell, right?

"_Hello?" _I tried to say. What came out of the shell in front of my vision made me **very **confused instead.

"**Shedinja**" the shell said.

"_Um… Why am I just saying shedinja?" _I tried to say.

"**Shedinja**" my shell said. My voice eerily echoed in a ghostly echo. It sounded deep, hollow. The empty shell just said that one word. That was all I could say.

_This can't be all I can say!" _I mentally cried out.

"**Shedinja**".

_Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no. I can't speak. I can't say anything. I've made a terrible mistake!_

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

Caleb and I walked down the mountain after I finished spitting out dirt. We were walking at a decent pace, and soon we may get to Sheila. "I am going to repair Sheila" Caleb said, causing me to blink. Being utterly destroyed by her did not have the best effect on me when it came to first impressions.

"You are going to fix her programming first, right?" I asked. He nodded, and then said "unless you want to find out how angry she is with you firsthand, I think I will fix her up".

"I'd rather not" I said with a small smile. Not too long after he made his choice, he was making jokes. I suspected he would not joke as much as he did when I first met him, at least for a while, but he would recover. We would all recover.

I smiled at the thought as we travelled down the path together. Walking side by side once again felt good, though Caleb kept changing speeds in an attempt to avoid being **right **next to me. His persistence was impressive, but I would not be deterred.

He was willing enough to not just flee as fast as possible when I tried to pounce on him, and had amused himself by holding me down on the ground. He **had **warned me after all.

There was the damage from the missiles we began to passing. To my amazement, Caleb did not even blink as the damage repaired himself as he passed it. Craters refilled themselves, toppled trees righted themselves, and the landslide came back up the mountain and repaired itself just as we began to walk onto it. I was amazed. Caleb looked like he had hardly noticed.

Sheila's upside down form sat there, deactivated. Caleb grimaced. "Next time, i'll give her a way to flip herself" he said. Now I grimaced. "As long as she won't kill me on sight, i'm good" I responded. Suddenly, a slab of stone jutted from the ground under the large tank and flipped her. "You seem to have done quite a bit of damage to her" Caleb noted.

"Thank Ammy for that" I replied.

"**BZZZZZT. UPRIGHT POSITION DETECTED. POWER ON. LIFE FORMS DETECTED. LOCATION WITHIN BARRIER. HOSTILE ACTIONS AUTHORIZED**" Sheila said immediately. I took a few steps back.

"No, no" Caleb said "disengage hostility program, effective immediately". Sheila immediately looked right at him. "**OH, HELLO, CALEB. HOW MAY I HELP YOU TODAY? WHY DO YOU HAVE… HER WITH YOU?**" Sheila asked. She said 'her' like I was the equivalent of an unwelcome weed in a berry garden. I was not too happy about that.

"Sarah is exempted from the priority one protocol" Caleb said "In fact, the priority one protocol is to be deleted. Full access to the mountain is allowed from this point forward".

"**ACKNOWLEDGED. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO FOR YOU?**" Sheila said, her voice becoming rather happy, actually. Caleb nodded. "Allow me to repair you, and upgrade your equipment and protocols" Caleb said. Suddenly, sheila's dented armor bent back into shape, and she suddenly said "**ALL DAMAGED EQUIPMENT BACK ONLINE. NANO CANISTERS DETECTED. WEAPON ADAPTABILITY IMPROVED. META-CLAWS TECHNOLOGY ADAPTED AND ENABLED… Voice volume lowered. Submarine technology improved. Amphibian technology improved. Hovercraft technology improved. Nuclear weapons disabled**. **Emotion capabilities drastically improved. Travel of land authorized**".

_Oh, thank goodness. Nuclear weapons sound bad. Don't know what they are, but they sound bad. The voice is better too. _

"New prime directive: Do what you want to do" Caleb said "also, reset emotional response to Sarah and Amaterasu".

"**Affirmative**" Sheila said "**all programs updated**". Caleb nodded. Sheila looked right at me. "**Emotional response to you and Amaterasu have been reset. Due to this directive, I no longer feel the need to obliterate you**" Sheila said.

"That's, uh… That's-that's nice" I stammered. How cheerful she was when she said that. This crazy tank scared the living daylights out of me at this point. "We must continue" Caleb intervened "Good day to you, Sheila". Sheila turned her attention to him. "**Thank you, Caleb**" she said, and then she rolled away.

We continued. Trees became more dominant in the landscape as we neared the base of the mountain. After trying to talk with Caleb for about fifteen minutes, with him trying not to get too involved in conversation, I ran straight into an invisible wall.

"Oh" Caleb said, a smirk appearing on his face. I glared at him as adorably as possible. "Let me fix that" he said, before a massive wall turned from clear to yellow around the mountain and shattered into thousands of shards of glass like things that vaporized before they hit the ground.

I tried to pass by again, but my face hit the same wall. "Hey! I thought-" I started indignantly. Caleb chuckled. "I apologize. I could not help myself, Sarah. I know it was rather unbecoming of me, but I could not help myself". The remaining wall right in front of me shattered too.

This time I walked by unhindered. I scowled at Caleb. Why was he enjoying himself now? Was this his alternative to revenge? How long was it before I got him to talk to me normally? I do not like being tricked.

Caleb knew this. Had his kindness slightly evaporated along with his old life? Perhaps my new job was to fix that. "Come on, Caleb" I said sweetly "Why don't we go on?" Caleb nodded at me, and we continued.

Next up, we came across the mirror that I found Amaterasu. She was not there, but Caleb certainly seemed to recognize it. "This is where you found Amaterasu, is it?"

"Yeah. She was really lazy at first, but once she got moving, she was ready for the fight. We almost got wrecked by Sheila, by the way". Caleb grimaced at that. "I can apologize all you want me to, Sarah, and I apologize for everything. Right now, I want to thank Amaterasu for keeping you alive".

"Noted" Amaterasu's voice came from behind, scaring the living daylights out of me and causing Caleb to shudder slightly. "Forgot to use my absol sense, and i've only been out of commision for a few days…" Caleb muttered in self disgust.

"Hey, Ammy!" I said, whirling. I swear, she hates me more every time I use that name, but her irritability was amusing. Her scowl was more of a disappointed one than an angry one.

"Ah. Amaterasu" Caleb said, turning around "It is a pleasure to meet you now". Amaterasu nodded and gave me a look that said: See? _That is how you act professionally_.

I gave a sheepish smile, and Caleb sighed. "Because I enter this place when I sleep, I will be available a certain amount of the day. If there is a question you have or you need something, I will be around for a while each day unless I have to go without sleep for whatever reason" Caleb said "Is there anything you need right now?"

"No, I believe not" Amaterasu said "I will however follow you to become acquainted with the others in that house you have built". Caleb nodded, and then started to walk away. We followed. I wanted to make conversation with Caleb, but what was there to talk about?

The trees slowly thinned as a meadow began to appear. The flowers were all sorts of colors, and they slowly changed over time. I watched Caleb fix an area where a few were crushed, as if underfoot. They righted as Caleb passed by. Amaterasu noticed some wilted flowers, froze time, and drew a circle around them, causing them to regrow. To all of our shock, Caleb was completely unaffected by the time freeze.

"Interesting" was all Caleb said. He then walked off with me and Amaterasu both staring at him. Amaterasu was flabberghasted. I began to follow him, and Amaterasu had to sigh and deal with it.

The house was visible, and Riley was still outside. He was quick to notice us, and walked down the hill to greet us. "Good to see you back to normal, Caleb. Probably should have come to get you myself, but Sheila would have ripped me apart" Riley greeted us, explaining what was up at the same time.

_That is the lamest excuse ever. _

"Right. Thanks to Sarah here, I am in a much better condition mentally. Thanks to Amaterasu here, Sarah is alive to be here right now. She's clear, by the way, Riley". Riley nodded. His coat was back on, though it was still burned. Caleb frowned.

"Let me fix that" he said, and the burn marks on his coat faded away. Caleb continued talking. "I'm surprised you got hit at all, Riley. Are you slacking? Sarah getting a hit off on you is surprising".

"Well…" Riley said, sheepishly rubbing his neck "I created an explosion with her flamethrower and damaged everything nearby, including me. By the way, what's with her reaction when I took the thing off?"

"Well, Sarah thought it was fur at the time…" Caleb answered slowly. It was my turn to smile sheepishly. "Well, if Caleb decides you're alright, then you're alright, I guess. And who are you then?" he asked, addressing Amaterasu now.

"My name is Amaterasu" she responded "I do not have anything else to say, besides that I fought Sheila to assist Sarah". Riley looked impressed, as he should do. "And you lived? Impressive. I'll have to spar with you at some point" he said, and seeing her confused expression, he said "Spar means battle, train, fight. I'll have to see how strong you are".

Amaterasu nodded. She really was a lot like Caleb in that way, probably because of how random her appearance was here. Caleb's personality mostly became hers. If I made a nickname for Caleb, would he act the same way? For some reason, I now wanted to call him something different, poke fun at him, to see his reaction. A test of sorts.

Maybe at some point. I should wait for the moment. Right now, I wanted to see the others. "Hey, what is the house like then?" I asked. Riley immediately tensed. After the last time, I was worried about having my face broken again, but Caleb saved me. After giving me a look that said _calm yourself_, he said "Relax, Riley. I owe her at this point, and she is free to look around inside". He then looked at me "you might get pounced on" he warned.

Riley looked unsure, but after a glare that I could feel straight through his blackglasses and a warning not to breath fire under penalty of brutal destruction, he walked towards the building. We followed quickly. I had no intention of being destroyed by that walking stick of his.

He pushed open the door easily and moved inside. There was a bookshelf, with multiple books on it, though it was not very full. There were two books title 'wizard island', though one was much larger than the other. The walls were dark colored wood, and the rooms along the hallway had lots of different things in there. One had this weird obstacle course in it, another looked full of comfy furniture, and some others seemed like storage for random things Calem must have created on a whim.

The things that were most obvious were two bedroom type rooms. They belonged to pokemon obviously. The decorations were impressive, I will admit. "Where have those two gone?" Caleb asked. Riley shrugged "They aren't outside of the house, that's for certain".

"Hmmmm…" Caleb hummed in thought, looking about. He walked into the room with a bunch of furniture, and looked about. Riley knelt and whispered to me and Amaterasu: "He's pretending not to know where they are. He's using his absol sense, but he's pretending not to. He knows exactly where they are".

_Oh. Wait, he's playing a game? What the heck? Is it because this place is built by him that he likes it so much? He always smiles when he sleeps… He loves this place, and he loves the people in it._

"Maybe… Here?" Caleb said, peeking behind a couch. He was definitely playing with them. Like a parent with his kids. It was a weird thought, considering how he is normally. I wanted to know where they were myself, and decided to check the room.

I could not sense them in the room for a moment, before I focused on trying to tell what was inside a few things. A weird cabinet thing had something in it, though my vision was blurry through the item, and it was moving a bit. The other was underneath a fancy, short table with drawers on it. Them being inside things, it was harder for me to sense them, but Caleb was good at his job.

According to Caleb, these kids were the kid versions of us. I had felt **very **happy when I learned that he at least liked me enough for me to show up in his dream. My smile widened at the thought.

After pretending not to know where the kids were for about five minutes, he suddenly made everything in the room vanish. The one in the cabinet dropped to the ground all of a sudden, his dark blue skin evident. This was Small Caleb. The other one, looking about bewildered, was red, with some pink in her white fur, and her sky blue eyes flicking about looking at everything.

I kept a smile on my face, though I noticed that she was not acting like me. Probably in the sense of the others, she was her own person. She just had the same body that I did.

When she noticed Caleb, she muttered "cheater…", causing me to smirk. Little Caleb jumped at Caleb immediately. "You're back!" he said cheerfully in a very un-Caleb manner. Caleb laughed at the little version of him. "Yes. I am" he said, rubbing the top of the little absol's head with his paw, causing Little Caleb to try and get away.

"Hey…" he muttered, breaking away. Little Sarah came up to Caleb. "It's been so long!" She said, crashing into him. I chuckled, noting how much I wanted to be able to do that and get the smile Caleb was giving my kid counterpart.

I had drawn attention to myself and Amaterasu. "Ooh!" Caleb's kid version said in my direction, his wide eyes looking me up and down "Who are you!?"

he bounded forward until he was stopped right in front of me, and my small version ran up to Amaterasu. They greeted us of course, something it was weird experiencing. I was talking to myself, and Caleb, but they were not me and Caleb. This Caleb was more excited at all times, acting like a little kid. My small version was a bit quiet, almost shy in the face of new arrivals.

"So these guys are sticking around too?" my younger counterpart asked.

Caleb began to explain. "Amaterasu here" he said, gesturing to Ammy next to me "is going to be a part of this dream with all of us. This one" he said, pointing at me "Is Sarah. She lives where I am when I am not here, and she will be returning there directly after this. I decided to let her meet you two before we leave" Caleb explained.

"Awesome!" Little Caleb and me said at the same time, before promptly trying to get me to play with them.

_They really are kids. _

For almost an hour, I was getting tackled by little kid absols, and Caleb had us go outside while he replaced the things in the room. Ammy got her share of tackles when I was too busy hopelessly trying to entertain one and the other got bored. Amaterasu had her weird disk blade floating a distance away from her to avoid hurting Caleb's child counterpart with it. When he started trying to get to it, she started playing an efficient game of keep away.

When I got a break at one point when Little Sarah suddenly saw the game Little Caleb was making Amaterasu play. Ammy was actually just trying not to hurt him, but soon she had to deal with two hyperactive absol. With the distraction, I went to Caleb.

"A bit hyperactive, aren't they?" I asked. He nodded, and looked at Amaterasu. The being in question was now having her little disc hovering in the air where the little ones could not reach it. They were protesting how unfair it was, and Amaterasu grimaced as they turned away to find something else to tackle, namely me and Caleb. Our counterparts smashed into us at top speeds, which was not much.

I however, found myself falling over while Caleb stayed standing. His armor was not on in the dream, so the kid's headbut into Caleb's chest did not do much damage to either person. They looked so much alike like that, though Caleb was bigger. I probably had the same image with me and my kid counterpart.

I noticed something looking into her eyes. They were sky blue, but not the blue that my eyes were now, my eyes having grey marks in them. "So your name's Sarah too, huh?" she asked with a smile. I smiled back. "Yep. That's me, Sarah" I said, using her name. It was my name too, but I can't be picky about it. The only problem I have is using Caleb's name and having two people turn to me.

Amaterasu sighed with relief once she knew that she was totally alone. Riley laughed and started talking to her. I could barely hear "This is life here" before Amaterasu shook her head in apparent denial. Riley laughed at the sight before leaning against the house. He pulled out a wicked looking weapon from one of those sheaths and wiped it down with a piece of his 'clothing'.

The thing looked serrated, but it was different. The serrated 'blade' had rather blunt edges that looked rough at the serrated bit. It would rip things apart fine, but it probably would not do that much in the way of actually slicing things. Either way, it was a scary thing to look at, and it looks like he has another one as well.

Caleb (my Caleb) noticed me looking. "You would have been on the receiving end of those things if you had actually managed to disarm Riley. He hates being disarmed of his quarterstaff".

"That's what that walking stick is called?"

"Yes. The other weapons are called snow saws, actually built for cutting cubes of ce to build ice structures to stay warm during the night".

"Wait, stay warm in an ice structure? What?"

"If you build it right".

_Alright…_

"I don't need to know how to build an ice fort" I said "Just how to build relationships". I smiled at Caleb after I said this, causing him to sigh in a manly way.

"I can only hope you never find out" he said, and walked towards the others. His counterpart preoccupied me from following him by talking to me. "Hey, so you're Sarah, right?" he asked.

"Yes, I am" I confirmed. For some reason, these little kids made me smile. Normally kids do make me smile quite easily. This kid though, he was like the spitting image of what Caleb would have been had he been born and raised here. He would be a good person as he grew older, especially with Caleb caring for him.

"You look different from our Sarah…" he said, peering into my face "Your eyes… They've got grey streaks! That's awesome!" This made me smile.

"You think so?"

"yeah! they look deeper somehow!" he said happily. If he liked them, I bet Caleb would too. I was amazed that he had not noticed yet. My Caleb was so observant sometimes, and sometimes he was beyond dull.

"Sarah! We had best get going!" Caleb called out from where he was talking to the rest of them "We need to get back. It has been days, after all. I should probably be eating something you know".

"Ooooh, right" I said "Let's get you out of here!" I rushed over to him and said "Let's get you out of here. You feeling the hunger right now?"

"No, I do not feel any hunger at the moment. Oh… Oh dear, that is going to hit me hard when I wake up, no? I had best prepare myself" Caleb said. "Oh, yes" I responded "and we're going to get you back **right now**, because everyone is worried sick about you".

"Allow me to say goodbye first" he said "In fact, you should too. I may find this place every night, but you probably will never see this place again. Say goodbye to everyone, Sarah. Then, I want you to lead me to wherever you came in. I don't want you trapped in here when I wake up".

The kids looked at me with confusion. "Not coming back?" the asked together. I nodded sadly. "I can't just come here whenever I like. It was a special circumstance that led to me coming here at all, and I have to go back. I'm sorry".

I put my head down to the children's level. "It was great to meet you two, you know. I really enjoyed playing with you two, and i'm sure you will have a great time around here from now on. Good luck, guys".

They smiled broadly and nuzzled against me. Caleb was looking right at me, as if noticing how good I was with children. Having small Caleb nuzzling me did not feel like it would if my Caleb did so. This kid was very different from Caleb, and my little version was very different from me. These kids were unique, alive.

It was impressive how alive these people were, and I would remember them forever, whether they were decent or brutal, and I knew they were all good inside. I had to get Caleb out of here, though.

The goodbyes lasted ten more minutes, with Sheila Rolling up out of nowhere and scaring the crap out of us, and as we were done panicking (except Caleb, who had taken it in silence), and cheerfully reported in to say what she planned to do for the rest of time. Her being what Caleb called a 'computer', she was apparently able to do calculations like that whenever she wanted.

Anyways, after the kids greeted Sheila, and Caleb warned her not to crush them under penalty of a serious pain delivery, and Sheila nodded with her cannons. Her always thinking aloud, she said "**my** **analysis of your protectiveness details the danger involved in harming these two. No harm will come to Caleb and Sarah, I assure you**".

After that was cleared up, Caleb walked straight to me. "We must go now".

I nodded, and we began to travel to where I got into this place. The tear in the air still stood there. "I wonder what would happen if I jumped through that…" Caleb wondered, and put his paw to it immediately. His paw hit a solid wall of sorts there. I was very worried about that.

"What will we do now?!" I asked frantically, causing Caleb to hold up his paw in a clear _Calm yourself_. "I probably have to decide to wake up, because that is how the badge power works. However, I fear that you will be trapped here if I wake up before you leave" he said".

"Alright. If you don't wake up within a minute, I am coming back in here and dragging you by the tail out of here" I threatened. Caleb snorted at that, and then suddenly, I found myself being flung through the portal by his dream powers.

_Well that was blunt…_

I had the reverse feeling from when I entered, seeing Caleb in my vision as I flew into the real world. I crashed into the ground, finding Drowzee and Sage above me. "Well?" Drowzee asked. I scrambled up and went back to Caleb. His scowl had diminished to a monotone line. An improvement.

I waited for ten seconds. Twenty. After thirty, the ghostly aura around him began to fade slowly. A smile broke out on my face as I knew that Caleb would come back for good. As it dissipated, his eyes slowly opened and gazed at me with rather emotionless eyes for a moment before they slowly regained what he had reclaimed of his personality. He would be changed forever, but he was still my Caleb.

He stood shakily to his feet, while Sage stepped forward. "Just what, young man, were you thinking doing that? You could have starved!" he chastised. I wanted to rebuke the tiny pokemon, but Caleb nodded his head.

"Please forgive me, I was not in my right mind. The crisis is over. I owe Sarah for that, and I suppose I at least one of you two as well, considering I at least know an absol cannot enter dreams like that" he said, his calm nature affecting the tiny grass type.

"Very well, but it was a dangerous thing to do and-" he was cut off on his rant when the loudest growl sounded.

It had come from Caleb's stomach. I began laughing hard at Caleb's expression, and his sudden droopy eyes as his body realized it had no energy. "Perhaps some food would be nice…" he muttered before staggering out of the house and was swarmed by more shaymin.

"Hey, you're awake!"

"Why were you asleep?"

"Perhaps I should know who you all are" Caleb interrupted the questions, and Sage stepped forward. "You are in the Shaymin Village. I am a shaymin, you may call me Sage. The pokemon responsible for Sarah entering your dream is Drowzee there.

"Thank you all for any contributions to fixing this situation" Caleb said aloud "In the mental state I was in, I would not have helped myself, and my gratitude towards you, Drowzee and particularly Sarah is immense". After seeing my new expression, he immediately said "Though not grateful enough to get sucked into a potentially unhealthy relationship", amending his position.

This of course brought an uproar of laughter from the other Shaymin. Sage looked slightly numb to the laughter, and Drowzee was just glancing at me with fear. I, however, was a little flabberghasted. "P-potentially unhealthy?" I demanded, stammering because of how much I had **not **expected that phrase.

The laughter grew louder, and Caleb turned to Sage. "I am rather hungry of course" he muttered just loud enough to hear.

"Oh, dear. Everyone, out of the way, please!" Sage called "this absol needs food immediately. Someone get a basket of berries. The large one, please. **immediately, please**". He said that last part with more intensity, and suddenly the village bolted into action as some got out of the way of our path and some others ran into a small building.

After about two minutes, Caleb was presented with a massive basket of berries that had just about every berry ever except for the bad ones and tamato berries. Caleb actually took the time to look at the shaymin who had brought him the food and say "thank you" before digging in. He used to act a bit awkward about eating, probably because he used to use hands for things.

Sage made a comment on his politeness even while starving, while Caleb ate every single berry from the basket in thirty seconds. It was impressive. He ate it so fast that he had berry juice on his armor. He looked down at it almost incomprehensibly, and then, to our shock, his stomach growled **again**.

Caleb ate another basket of berries, and then half of a third basket. It nearing breakfast time, the shaymin began to help themselves to the rest. Caleb laid down for a while, shooing me off when I tried to near him, saying something about 'personal space'.

After ten minutes, I went over to him again. He told me the same thing, but this time I was much more adamant about being with him. "You will never get rid of me" I promised, sitting next to him. He growled softly, but it was a growl of defeat.

Once I tried to get closer though, he put his paw on the top of my head and slammed my face into the dirt, just like he did in the dream. I struggled for a moment, it being difficult to breath.

Finally, he let me go right as I pulled at it, causing me to tumble back. "I am fully capable of doing that **every **time you get too close to me" he threatened. I smiled at him in response. "Oh, I know" I responded.

He grimaced at that, realizing that I would not be stopped in my attempts to move forward with the relationship we did not have yet. I Promised myself, I **vowed **to make him mine, and if it takes my entire life to make it so, I will succeed.

After a short rest to digest, he just got up and began to walk away, only stopping to thank the people of the shaymin village, including Sage, Drowzee, and now the combusken apparently also living here and had apparently written the return letter to the guild.

We could have asked for another letter to be sent telling the guild about our return. We did not. Instead, we walked away after the goodbyes were done, my second goodbye today. At least I might see these pokemon again.

Caleb did not seem to want to run, making this a several day trip in the long run. I did not mind. Now, I had Caleb all to myself for three days. As far as he was concerned, it was supposed to be quiet. He wanted quiet.

_Should I be quiet, or should I press him?_

I wanted to press him until he broke and let me be near him, but the decent thing to do would be to let him think. On the other hand, his constant train of thought led to him to fall into that depression and anger. What should I do? I wanted to be happy, and he needed to be happy too. What should I do?

_I'm anything but decent, _I decided. I walked a bit closer to him on our path down the mountain.

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

I was very conflicted. I wondered still if I should change my mind and find a way off of this island, find another island, and be isolated. What should I do?

_I owe it to Sarah to stay. I owe it to everyone. _

Sarah was walking uncomfortably close to me, prompting me to move away. "At this rate, we will end up going in the wrong direction" I muttered, switching sides with Sarah so that I was going in the right direction. Sarah gave her little smile. "Better stop avoiding me then" she said.

"That is basically blackmail" I informed her "It's not clever".

"Who cares about being clever?" she asked "there's nothing clever about love". I grimaced at that. She was listening when I told her why she fell so desperately in love with me. "You do realize that-" I started.

"Loneliness and the like. Yeah, I know" she said, then, she got in my face as she walked "i don't care. There are other reasons to like you, and I will never, **ever **leave you alone. **Ever**. You can either run from me for the rest of your life, or you can accept that I am going to nuzzle you and try and be with you **every**. **Single**. **Day**".

That was unnerving. "Ohhh… kay then?" I stammered, my uneasiness showing through my sudden failure to use more professional terms. "Y-you know, suddenly I need some more water. Perhaps there's a river nearby or something.

_Anything that is __**not here**__. _

Sarah giggled at that, and at this point fear was racing through my heart. I think my fur was bristling a bit, despite the fact that I did not look and see. "Shut up, furball" she teased "you ate so many berries that the juices could quench your thirst for a lot more time, but I guess you didn't know that".

"F-furball?" I stammered, my voice indignant. Sarah's eyes had a triumphant look in them, a fire in her eyes.

_Hang on a minute…_

"What happened to your eyes, Sarah?" I asked suddenly, stopping and standing looking at her. They had gray streaks in them. "Oh, just got blinded by a blast of light a day or so back, plus however long I was in the dream" she responded, as if it did not matter, then she got **real **close and fluttered her eyes a bit. "You like it?"

"Wait… You're **blind**!?" I practically shouted at her. And I had attacked her when she was like that? She had fought everyone like that?! "No! No, I was healed, but some of the grey stayed in my eyes" she amended. I sighed with relief. She had not been damaged permanently.

"You scared me like that, you know. Blindness is a permanent thing in my world- My old world" I said. I wanted to get out of this conversation, but Sarah had new ammunition.

"I scared you, huh?" she whispered, and I realized I needed to get out of there, but I could not make myself do that. "I worried you? You cared?"

I sighed. Time for the truth, but I had to word this carefully. I then realized that it would be pointless. She would interpret it in her way regardless. I was screwed, for lack of a better word. "Yes… I care about the general health of my teammates, Sarah. I would be as worried if Nincada was injured that way, too".

She seemed not to even hear that last part. Five seconds later, I stopped her movement towards me with a paw on the top of her head and slammed it into the dirt. I guess that was my official anti-Sarah at this point. She kept trying to pull away from me when I did that, and she always ended up tumbling back.

Which is what she did as I began to walk forward again. She caught up to me faster than I would have liked. I wanted to get out of there. "Can you just stop?" I said, my voice actually nearing a whine at this point. She was scaring me, and I knew it would never stop until I died of old age or something somehow managed to kill me. Unless Sarah was older than me.

"No".

"Maybe an extra foot of space would be nice…"

"Not a chance".

"Please?"

"Hah, you have a lot to learn about me, Furball".

"Like that you have no sense of decency or restraint? Also, Furball? Again?"

"You needed a nickname. You said your **name **is Caleb right? A nickname like this suits you".

"What was that?"

"I said it suits you".

I sighed. She was playing with me now, and probably thought I was flirting back or something. Just mortifying. I had to get out of here.

I decided to run. It had been a while since I ran. Sprinting over rocks and such, almost losing my balance a few times. Sarah unfortunately kept pace with me. I needed to get away from her. Problem was, she has been an absol all her life, while I had been one for about a month. I had to be careful; Sarah knew what she was doing.

And calling me 'Furball'. Seriously? That was incredibly insulting to me at this point. I was not supposed to be this way! Only my body is furry!

_Why do I care about that? Why do I care what she calls me?_

Ohhh, dear, this was going to be tough to analyze. I used to think I was good at this stuff. Nowadays, I was not so certain. What have I become now? Was I still even remotely human?

_I still have a human nature, but beyond everything, I am a completely different person, and I will never truly heal. I am an absol, but I am still human. I still have a human mind, though I have an absol's instincts. Memory. That is what keeps me human. My memory of everything bad… and everything good about the world I was forced to leave, and then decided to stay away from. _

_I don't think about the positives enough, I now realize. I should fix that, too. _

We stopped running when we neared the edge of the mountains. Sky peak being just about in the center of this island, we had a good couple days walking ahead unless Sarah was being annoying and invasive.

_Seriously, she thinks acting like that can make me fall for her? Things I need: Space, quiet, reason, decency, and not to be trapped with a crazed pyromaniac_.

Sarah actually was driving me crazy if I was thinking negatively about her, and it somehow had nothing to do with me having to be here at all.

_I forgave her for that. I blame myself anyways. It is my fault after all. My poor family…_

Now I was becoming depressed, and distracted to the point of tripping on a rock and somersaulting into a nearby tree, just like when the team of nine was going to the waterfall cavern. Sarah stopped by me and laughed a bit.

_My poor face… At least Sarah is not fawning over me like a mother with an injured kit. Whoa, where did that word come from?_

Kit? Kit? Was I succumbing to absol instincts? Instincts should not just give out words like that, but I was trying to think 'kid'. Instead my thoughts turned to 'kit'. This is another thing to deal with. Another thing to either accept or defeat.

I remembered the headaches I had gotten when I tried to fight off my instincts. Doing that would not go well, but I know and fear instinct. Instinct makes animals do things based on smells or situations. Fight or flight, etcetera. There was even one for… Reproduction.

If I started to fall in love with somebody, would I be able to fight it without a splitting headache? I sorely hoped so. I also hoped that I would manage not to let go of my humanity. It was all I had left, really.

I went to dust myself off, then realized that my paws are about as useful as a dump truck in the ocean when it came to maneuverability. Okay, maybe that is a bit of hyperbole, but seriously, I could barely manage to facepalm (facepaw?) without major difficulty.

_and now, I am ranting again. I am going insane, truly. Ranting, instincts, Sarah's attachment that will never work… This whole world is mad. _

And I was just mad enough to like it.

**⽕Sarah's POV⽕**

We walked along, Caleb taking a bath and plenty of drink at the first water source he saw: a river. I guess he was thirsty after all After he finished drinking water, he just sank into the deep water for a bit and swam, getting any dust out of his fur. He was a clumsy swimmer, having been an absol only about a month, but he was weirdly good at it for that time.

"You learn quickly" I told him when he emerged. I was willing to let him have some rest before I started hounding him again. "Actually, I just train in my dreams. I have done better so far, but I fear it will take a long time before I forget the habits I had as a human" he replied, shaking himself.

"You are still rubbish at that" I noted, seeing only a little of the water leave his super absorptive fur. He nodded, though I could practically feel the disappointment that he held for himself. He blamed himself for everything now. That was one new thing that had to go.

Caleb, dripping wet, started to walk again anyways instead of doing what a sensible absol would do; lying in the sun and drying off. Maybe he was being a sensible human, but he needed to be a sensible **absol **to function properly. I would have to explain everything about absols later.

_Like what starts to happen when they get to eighteen years of age…_

I decided against talking about that to him for a while. If he went without knowing a few things, that couldn't be so bad could it? Instincts can be strong, especially if Caleb does not know about it.

I decided to keep quiet about that for now, though I suspected if Caleb asked, or more likely demanded to know about it, I would not be able to refuse him.

"What do you want to talk about?" I ventured, catching up to him. He looked down at the grass he was walking in. "Frankly, I would prefer silence, Sarah" he responded. He looked sad now. In fact, he looked downright depressed. He had probably remembered something.

I did not want to ask him what. His expression told me to shut up and back down for now. His brooding was unsettling. If he went back into that depression… He was not allowed to go to sleep again. He had basically promised not to, and I sensed he would keep his promises, but I still had my worries.

Useless worries, the lot of them. Caleb would stick around now. Everything wrong was fixed now. Caleb knew that everyone would be destroyed if he did that again. He would not be so selfish again. His selfishness had stemmed from his despair and depression, and it was so much worse than what I saw in his eyes now. Poor Caleb.

And yet, lucky me. Even if Caleb never accepted it, he was the best person I ever met. He was always brave and smart. In fact, he was a genius, this being part of his problem now. He thought too much.

Mightyena may have a particular thing about being loyal, but Caleb was better at being loyal than Mightyena was. Servine had her sense of duty, but Caleb's sense of duty seriously outclassed her.

"Your staring is making me rather uncomfortable…" Caleb admitted. A smile appeared on my face as I said "really?"

"Yes. I can practically see the thoughts racing about in your head" he replied, not yet catching my move. "Well," I said "your thoughts are swirling around your head, too, and I can tell they aren't happy. Cheer up, you silly furball. You need to relax".

"I cannot" Caleb said sadly "I refuse to forget my past. If I allow myself to forget, I will no longer be the same person. I have changed enough. I cannot change, not anymore. I want to stay human at least. Also, furball again?" he said. His sadness was incredibly moving.

He thought he would forget everything about himself if he was not thinking at all times. It was sad to think about, because I did not even know if he was right or not. Maybe he was, or maybe he was being pessimistic. He has lost so much, and he was basically saying that if he lost anymore, he would no longer be Caleb. Maybe he was right.

And yet, if he forgot a few things about his world, he may be a different Caleb, but he would be so similar, the same things I loved about him would stay, he would only be more cheerful. He deserved to have a good life here after everything he went through.

_Do I even deserve him? Does he deserve better?_

Even if I did not deserve Caleb, even if he deserved better, my feelings for him would never die. I wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. He wanted quiet, and for once I was perfectly willing to give it to him.

_Next time though… I will make you mine. I will wear you down until you give up completely, cheer up, and learn who loves you most. _

The next while went on in silence. Caleb dried out over time, and slowly, ever so slowly, his head began to raise in general. His expression turned from dark to monotone as he finished up his little thinking session. It had been almost eight hours.

We were nearing the guild after so long of walking. It seems we had been moving double time. "One thing before I enter civilization again" Caleb started. This brought about a massive smile on me, me totally getting the wrong idea.

"You can talk to our personal friends about the dream world… But I don't really want you to talk about those kids, alright? For some reason, I want to keep them secret. Mightyena and Servine and Jake and Nincada, they can know about the rest, if you really want to tell them…"

"I won't say anything about what happened on the mountain" I assured him. He tried to shrug, before scowling at the fact that quadrupeds have a tough time with that. I nodded in understanding about the kids. He wanted to protect them. I would talk about whatever else he did not, including Sheila, Riley, Ammy, and the events Caleb said nothing of. But little Caleb and Sarah were to remain a secret. I respected that. Even if I did not respect some of his wishes, I can at least respect that one.

We continued to walk to the town, hearing it from a mile away, mostly the roars of large pokemon dueling in the streets over whatever for whatever reason. The fields of tall grass were next, and Caleb had a trick he tried to get ahead, slipping through the grass faster than I thought he would, and managing not to be so loud. he took a weaving path, and I was only able to follow because I was smart enough to use my absol sense this one time.

"Nice try" I told Caleb as we emerged from the grasses. "I decided it would be worth it to try" he responded in a monotone voice. Would he talk like that for a long time now?

I nudged him now. "Oh, I know you are just **dying **to release all that emotion of happiness in you, eh, Furball? Why not let it out and play along a little?"

"Such an act is not very professional, Sarah" he replied "Also, furball again?"

"Get used to it" I said, grinning in response to his sigh. He shook his head in apparent annoyance, but his lips did twitch into a smile. Just for a millisecond, I got a smile. My eventual victory was assured. I had to resist doing a little dance in happiness.

The guild was bustling with pokemon, which we could tell before we got to the grate in front because the noise was coming straight through the grate. That had to be plenty of pokemon at this point. "Interesting…" Caleb muttered. He said no more than that. What was it going to be like down there?

We went through the routine of having Diglett identify us by species, which was difficult to pull off because of the commotion. In fact, Loudred had to yell "SHUT UP!" before continuing to handle our entry.

We were of course allowed to come in, and just before we used the ladder Caleb said "Of course we could have teleported here… I forgot **again**. Why do I do that?"

Oh, wow. He was right. We were terrible, it seems. And a few days journey had seemed fun at the time. I was glad we did it, though, because I felt Caleb warm up just a little bit.

We came down the stairs slowly and carefully. The room was so full of pokemon that we had to avoid just jumping down and landing gracefully in the dirt floor. Instead, we were almost knocked right off of the ladder by some little bugger. Had no idea what species he was, he just glared and climbed up.

"A warm welcome in a warm home" Caleb mumbled, and I noted that the air was not warm at all. "I suppose I have the icy pokemon there to blame, yes?"

"Yep" I replied, looking at the snowflake shaped pokemon hovering around, other pokemon giving it a wide berth. That thing looked rather menacing, though it was clearly a good pokemon if it was floating around here.

"Let's get to the next level" I offered, Caleb nodding. We passed a large dragon like pokemon with red scales and wings as we passed. He was looking right at us with some suspicion. "Good day" Caleb said confidently as he traveled to the ladder. A small, brown furred pokemon with big ears and a puffy tail peeked out from the larger pokemon's leg.

It was the small one wearing the team leader badge at this point. The charizard had a badge as well, though it was one for the members of the team. "Team Amber" was written on it.

Caleb met the eyes of the small leader, who caught him nodding in her direction, and hesitated before nodding back. The dragon pokemon gave a small rumble at that exchange before we started down the ladder.

"Interesting kid, that one" Caleb said to himself as we neared the bottom and dropped down. This floor was much more empty, to my relief. "She was shy and small, but she was definitely the team leader. What brought that about, I will discover later.

"**Shedinja**".

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

The hollow noise reverberated through my skull as something snuck up on us. I spun, Sarah doing likewise, and I had a shadow claw prepared. I was glad I learned how to do this move, because I needed a decent replacement for my sword.

_A shame that sword almost caused so much death…_

A weird pokemon floated in front of us, a little higher than our heads. It looked like a shell of a bug, with an incomplete halo over it's head and it looked… Dead. I searched it with my absol sense, and I found that it was completely hollow. It's brown body never moved, not so much as a twitch, and it's floating did not take it anywhere. It was suspended in the air and not moving whatsoever. To my surprise and worry, the creepy thing floated closer to me.

"**Shedinja**" it said, or echoed. The voice came right out of it's body. It had a badge on, though I did not care to read it for the moment. "Hello" I said, disengaging my shadow claw, and regaining my composure though I felt like fleeing. This thing must be a ghost type or something, to make me feel like Duskull did. "Who are you, then?"

"**Shedinja**"

"Right then. Is there something I can help you with?"

"**Shedinja**".

"Is that all you say?" Sarah asked, poking the thing with her claw. The pokemon did not move at all in response to her touch, in fact when she tried to press it, it did not budge at all.

"**Shedinja**".

"Would that be an answer to your question, Sarah?" I inquired. She nodded, a little apprehensive, and we turned to walk away to the guildmaster's room.

The shedinja was following us, much to my worry. What was it doing? Was it even properly intelligent, just saying the same thing over and over and following people about, or was it just trying to be a creepy ghost?

It was succeeding.

As we began to enter, it talked again. "**Shedinja**". I turned to look at him. "Listen, I do not know who you are, Shedinja, but I cannot understand you and I have no idea what you are trying to say".

the strange pokemon stopped saying that. I wondered if it actually his name. I pushed the door open and walked in to see Wigglytuff. "Hello, Wigglytuff" I immediately said. Wigglytuff did not reply. He was staring straight ahead again.

Sarah moved forward, but I stopped her with a paw. "Don't wake him" I warned, unwilling to be blasted away again. What a welcome home. I moved behind Wigglytuff, Sarah doing likewise. I did not notice that Shedinja had not moved, nor did I realize that Sarah was not completely out of the way.

"Wake up, Wigglytuff!" I said from behind him.

"HIYA!" Wigglytuff said, waking up and unleashing hyper voice. Sarah's tail was caught and she was sent spinning like a frisbee in the air and into the wall. I noticed that Shedinja was completely unaffected by the hyper voice. "**Shedinja**".

It sounded the same, as every time it said anything. But Wigglytuff was awake and I had to avoid his hand as he spun around to see me. "Friend! How are you?!" he asked cheerily. I raised my head. "Thanks to my teammate, Sarah here, I am fine. I was not in the correct state of mind, and was not willing to even wake up. I am here now, however. Wigglytuff, I deeply apologize for my actions. Know I shall live here for a long time to come, or at least I suspect that. At least, I can never return to my own world. I simply could not".

"Of course I forgive you, friend!" he said loudly, happily. He was so ecstatic seeing me that he suddenly gave me a big, unwanted hug, which I wanted to back away from. Wigglytuff was stronger than me however, and it was like he was saying "_Not a chance of escape, my friend"_.

I struggled against it, but eventually I had to just accept that I was being hugged. I hoped I would not have to handle being hugged very often. I also hoped nobody started petting me. It sent euphoria racing through my system, but I hated it all the same.

"**Shedinja**".

I peeked out from where I could see half of Shedinja, all I could see behind Wigglytuff's mass. "Are you laughing or expressing your condolences?" I asked, humor escaping my voice. I shut it down quick. "**Shedinja**".

Right. he could not speak. "Wigglytuff, do you recognize this pokemon at all?" I asked. The guildmaster in question let me go (_Phew_) and turned to look at the floating pokemon. "Oh, That's Nincada!" he said, as if that made any sense.

"Wha-Huh?" I asked, bewildered "no, Nincada is different…"

"He just evolved, my friend!" Wigglytuff said. Evolved? What? "Er…" I muttered. He looked down at me. "Humans don't evolve?" he asked. I was very conflicted in my answer. I believed in evolution of course, it was the only thing that made sense. What Wigglytuff was saying was completely different. If Nincada had changed into that suddenly, that was not evolution. Well, actually it must be here. The definitions were different.

"I believe our definition of evolution is different than that in the pokemon world" I said safely. He looked at me with his wide eyes, and and then looked towards Nincada. The badge stuck to the empty shell did read 'team edge' and I was just unobservant enough to pay attention to it.

"Nincada?" I asked. "**Shedinja**" he replied. Wigglytuff looked at me now. "His name is Shedinja now" he said, as if replying for him.

"Nin-... Shedinja, it seems you can't talk anymore…" I ventured "We need a system then. For any yes or no question, I want you to float up and down for yes to simulate a nod, and shift side to side for no to simulate shaking one's head. Can you do that?" I asked.

"**Shedinja**".

"Starting now".

Nin-... Shedinja floated up and down. "_Yes". _

This was weird. I think that Shedinja was now a ghost type instead of a ground type, though I suspected he still had bug type qualities, because he was a bug shell. He also apparently could not speak. His type changed, which could either be an advantage or a disadvantage, and communications… Our ability to communicate had basically been destroyed.

"Hey, Shedinja. I must apologize. I was absent and then I was so unobservant that I did not notice the badge… My actions since coming back have been very unprofessional and slightly childish. I cannot apologize enough for my behavior" I said, lowering my head in a manner that showed shame.

"**Shedinja**".

Was that a rebuke or a thank you or an 'i forgive you'? How would I ever be able to talk to him again? On top of that, things had been going poorly since I got here, due to my carelessness. Now, though, I had another thing to learn yet again: What these pokemon used the term 'evolution' for.

So many things to learn, and I wanted to learn quickly. I had a life ahead of me, whether I liked it or not, and I had to be informed. "I think some rest is in order" I said finally, Shedinja moved side to side.

"You don't want us to rest?" I asked, and he moved side to side once again. "I see. You are a ghost pokemon, and don't need rest is that right?" I asked. Shedinja moved up and down now. Good. I could communicate with him, and beign able to put things together easily, I could follow what his reasoning was.

'Urrrgh… Owww".

A weight settled on my chest. Sarah had been sent spinning into a wall, and I had not even checked on her yet.

"Sarah!" I yelled, wincing at the dramatic actions I was taking, and checked on her. She was waking up from being unconscious after being ruthlessly knocked away by hyper voice. "Are you alright?!" I asked frantically.

"Not too bad… Not every battle i'm in ends with mortal injuries, okay?" she mumbled, coming to and seeing my face, which I realized was quite close to hers. "Nice to see that you care" she said triumphantly.

I was losing this fight now. I had to pull it back. "Of course I am worried" I said sternly "As the team leader, I have a responsibility for the well being of my teammates, no matter who they are or how annoying they can get".

"Annoying, huh, Furball? Annoying as the nickname I gave you?"

"Yes" I said flatly "You are insufferable".

"Oh, well. Anything to keep you around".

_Not doing a very good job, are you?_

Finally, I walked away and out the door. It was going to close on Sarah, but Shedinja put himself in the way and the door stopped. Shedinja had taken a hyper voice without any trouble; just how powerful was he?

Evolution must boost a pokemon tremendously. I wondered if I had a form I would take in the future. What would this 'evolution' feel like if it changed the pokemon entirely.

I walked towards the hall where our room was. I was going to sleep this all off. I thought I did, before something green and very fast slammed into me in a jump scare tackle hug.

I squirmed out of the hug, whipping around with a shadow claw prepared. I loved how that attack came about, It's ZAP sound sounding quite impressive to me. I faced my aggressor to see… Servine.

"You're back!" she said, and I blinked. "What was with the hug?" I asked. No hello. No greeting of any sort. She had startled me in that manner. "Oh, just…" she said, at a loss. I figured that her emotions were conflicting constantly. She had no idea who she was yet, and I suspected I had a job to do. Another one. I had to help her figure herself out, too.

Maybe just being around me would help her. "I don't know exactly. I just got excited" she stammered. I noted that Sarah was now glaring threateningly at Servine. "Calm yourself, Sarah" I instructed "Servine, I would prefer **not **to be hugged. While I am speaking, I must apologize for my behavior".

"Your behavior?" she asked in response. I nodded. "I am tired now. If Sarah wants to tell you, I would recommend you ask her. Ignore the glare she is giving you" I said, feeling exhausted "Is Mightyena around?"

"Yep" the wolf like pokemon said right behind me. I had not used my absol sense. "Unlike Servine, I still have control over my actions".

"Hey!" Servine interjected. The two new friends started arguing as if they were actually old friends. I sighed softly. The two of them were different, even different based on when I left them. The changed pokemon were probably negatively affected by my departure in the first place. I felt bad now.

Depression set in for a while as I watched the two bicker. I had little to do with the conversation they were now having, and they were arguing like children now. I was exceedingly tired. I had to say what I needed to and go to bed.

"Listen up" I said. The two of them immediately stopped and looked right at me. "I need to sleep. I need to say a few things. Apologize for a few things. Explain a few things. And if there are any blanks you need to fill, I need you to ask Sarah instead. I am tired, and I need some more rest".

Their attention was absolute now. I was glad for that. "It seems I will be spending the remainder of my life here, my only chance to go home gone. It was truly my own decision to betray my family, and I must apologize. For quite a while, I blamed you. All of you. The truth is, I am to blame, truly. Everything I went through in my head… Many of those things had nothing to do with you. My actions lately have been unforgivable, and I apologize".

I took a deep breath and continued. "My main reason that I could not go was the understanding that my life would never be the same, that there were too many variables and that if I for some reason remained an absol, or many other things that could have happened, the entire attempt would have been pointless".

"As far as I was concerned at that point, my life was basically over. I had betrayed my family, and I had no confidence of any sort of having any sort of decent life here, and frankly despite having regained some of the reasoning I had lost, I am still pessimistic about the topic".

After their eyes were done widening to the size of dinner plates at the 'life over' comment, I promptly bid them goodnight, despite the fact that it was barely the afternoon, and instructed Sarah to answer some questions before following me.

Seeing the tired, defeated look in my eyes, she reluctantly complied. I myself staggered all the way to my bed of hay and fell in it. I did not even care that I landed on my horn this time. I heard a gasp from Servine all the way from the common room, probably as Sarah told the story of the dream world. I wanted to hide now.

_I used to have friends here… Will they still be friends with me after this? Do I deserve friends? Do I want friends?_

_If they are good friends, they will stay. If I deserve anything, it will be decided if they stay. What I deserve, I think I will keep. Maybe, just maybe, I will find that I deserve to live here. Just… Maybe… I think sleep would be good now… Maybe I should stop thinking, just this once..._

* * *

**I know this chapter is very, very long. 12000+ words, actually. I wanted to wrap this situation up in this chapter, and i realized that the chapter was so incredibly long it was ridiculous. I am sorry if i test your patience. **

**I want you guys to know that book one is nearly done. I will put a URL of the second book when that is out in the Authors Notes of the last chapter. That last chapter, by the way, is the next one. Chapter thirty two. Book two, Entitled 'The Challenger' after the typical series declaration, will begin to be written immediately. I have that book entirely planned out, just like i did this one for the most part. Chapters are written as they are sent out of course. **

**After that bomb i dropped on you, i want you all to review and follow and anything else you want to do! Seriously! Review, review, review! Once i get to book two, i want to know everything i can work on, everything i have done well, everything. I also want to know who your favorite character is, and why. These things will make my story work much better as i work around the wording of my story. **

**Character bios! Please send them to me via personal email, to avoid spoilers. Jango has the responsibility now to respond to reviews and thank those who send in character bios, and i'm pretty sure you can count on him. With that out of the way, Enjoy the rest of your day and continue reading my story, soon to be stories. Thank you all.**

**-Hyperjade**

* * *

**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	32. Chapter Thirty two: Epilogue

**Hey, Jango here. This here is the final chapter of book one. Hyperjade has more to say on that later. Before you begin to read this, we actually had three whole reviews between these chapters! Awesome! We did actually manage to break twenty reviews on this story before the next one starts! I said we could do better, and we did. **

**Please, continue to review the story as you finish it. Hyperjade always likes knowing what people think, even if he is working on a different story at the time. Now, it is time to respond to a few reviews. Where is that paper...**

**Ah, here we go.**

_**"To Guest: I am glad you like Sheila's character. My attempt to make her amusing has apparently paid off. As for Nincada/Shedinja, well, you will just have to see how the characters deal with that".**_

**Jango: Well, Shedinja-... actually, i should not spoil that. I know how it will work out, and you don't! Ha! Right then... The next line...**

_**"To Tentreto: Maybe this chapter will answer at least one question, and several of your questions will recieve some speculation by the characters... As for the conclusion they come to, well, you will have to find out when they figure it out. I am glad you like this fanfiction, Tentreto".**_

**Jango: Pretty cool that you read through the entire piece. I know some of those chapters are longer than 11000 words, so good on you for sticking to it!**

_**"To Nopemanor: I am glad you love my story. and i shall keep it up. Also, thank you in advance for all of the teams you will send to me (though please send them to my personal email to avoid spoilers for other readers). That would be awesome. Thank you".**_

**Jango: Yes, send those teams to Hyperjade. I already know, of course, being from the future is fun. I don't want to spoil thing for you (though i would if i was not under threat of death by storytelling... I will never put myself in the position to have to tell my point of view on... THAT situation. No i wont. You cant make me talk about that...**)** *Shudder***

**Anyway, get yourself going, and read this final chapter! Please remember to read the author's notes at the bottom of this page, because Hyperjade has some things to say. Read on!**

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**Chapter 32: Epilogue**

**⽯Caleb's POV⽯**

How had I possibly recovered this quickly?

I wandered through the busy streets of Treasure Town. This place, it was a beautiful one. A pleasant one. It's power was clear to me, it's aura of happiness infectious. It was the two week mark before The tournament began, and many things had to be learned, many things had to be planned, many things had to be built.

I have met many teams whenever I wander this place. There was the psychic team led by medicham that I had gotten to know. There were several smaller teams that I have talked to, several arguments that I have broken apart. I was good at that last part, I already knew.

And then there was teams Ivy and Rush. Servine and Mightyena had become good friends with me again in a matter of days. I thought it was impressive that pokemon could forgive so easily, considering how bad humans are at it. That conversation had been confusing to me.

"_What is there to forgive?"_ Servine had asked, startling me deeply.

"_It was no surprise you were so broken down you made decisions like that" _Mightyena had assured me in a way that sounded like he truly believed it.

I had not argued at the time. I had been stunned and confused. I had attemtped to leave everything forever! How could they possibly forgive me for that? Was I the only one who cared about how terrible a person I clearly was?

Sarah was being a nuicance today, too. She had woken me up herself before Loudred could wake us up, probably because I had a very dangerous reaction to the rude awakening one week ago when I was stopped in my duel against Sheila. The tank in question had been very confused until I sent a message to that book of theirs. Sheila now had an internal connection to it, receiving any messages it contained and added them to her database. She was slightly insane, enjoying fighting too much, but Riley was too, then again.

I had scared the crap out of Loudred by leaping up and putting a shadow claw through him. he happened to be a normal type, so my attack went through him like there was nothing there, but I had scared him. He likened the look in my eyes to that of a gyarados, whatever the heck a gyarados was. I guess they have short tempers.

Sarah of course was staying as close as possible whenever possible. The foolish absol had no concept of personal space, and somehow knew less about relationships than I did, which mean she knew **nada** about relationships. At this point, I was ready to smack her into the ground soon. Her attempts to be near me were thwarted by my occasional escape, one just like I had achieved today to have a walk around.

Nincada was now a shedinja. The ghost pokemon was interesting now, because he, not being able to speak properly anymore, had to just attack things with his new shadow ball. He still knew x-scissor, which was interesting because the claws on his shell did not move. It was like the blades just flashed in the air in front of them on command.

The other strange thing was his seeming inability to be damaged by attacks. I have not seen so much as a scratch on his body as he fought, and he seemed completely invulnerable. It was impressive. Servine figures that we will have good times ahead of us knowing we had Shedinja on our team.

I still had little emotion on the outside. I kept myself professional, and it payed off. Pokemon came to me for guidance, and I answered questions with facts and common sense, as best as I could. I still have not told the masses that I was human; Frankly, I think they are still getting over the fact that Jake is one.

I have laughed a few times, like when I talk to my friends. Mightyena and Servine were very supportive. Jake and i… We did not talk so much, probably because he knew the state of the world we left. If we actually left the same world. I scared the poor electric mouse, really.

There were others I saw frequently. I have no intention of talking to that gossipy bug team, a team I have identified as team Emerald. They talked too much, and the time I got hit with a string shot, it **burned** me. Being a dark type has a few disadvantages.

I also saw team Amber around, and I believe they even have an absol with them. Maybe I could ask him tougher questions I would not dare ask Sarah lest she get the wrong idea. A magnezone followed the group, too.

_I need to talk to them at some point…_

Besides being burned by bug string, being a dark type was pretty good for me. We had basically no long range attacks, though I had been told that while I was a rampaging monster I had actually thrown a night slash. According to my friends, the attack was supposed to be a physical move, not going any further than my horn could.

I still could not do that properly, and night slash drained my power, even though it took things down properly and shattered boulders nicely. I always found myself staggering around when I tried to use it. My dark aura powered up Night slash, but it did not do so for Shadow claw, and it was probably due to them being a ghost type attack.

I was getting better at discerning types. It had made little sense to me at the start, when I found myself here, but I now knew about immunities and resistances and the like, and how attacks of the same type as you get a boost in power and effect.

I had explained that there were no 'types' in my world, and if there were things would be far more hectic. My friends had looked at me like 'you poor sap'. It had probably been a good thing that nobody in my world could control the energies that pokemon could. After this time recovering, I had tried to avoid some of the pessimism that I felt to my old world. Compared to this one, well, this place was devoid of war.

Nowadays, I tried to relieve some depression by attempting to focus on some of the good things about my world. There were more of these than I could remember, and unfortunately it was easier to remember the bad things, but every day I forced myself to recall five good things about my world. I would always use different things, and maybe I would run out of good things to remember, but for now it was helping me. Just a little bit.

_Quite a relaxing world _I thought as I sidestepped what was apparently a tyranitar grappling with another large pokemon. I had yet to learn every pokemon species at this point.

_In fact, it's downright cheerful _I thought, as something exploded violently behind me, probably the same two pokemon blasting each other. All in the spirit of the fight.

_For these pokemon, this __**is **__peace. _

I pondered that as I checked to make certain that nothing important was burning. Thankfully, whatever one of them did only burned down the grass **around **Electivire's link shop. Marril was fixing it. The small, blue pokemon that was the friend of Jake. His water attack put the flames out immediately before he went about his business.

Water attacks are weird. They were creating water there, and that was basically breaking the law of conservation of mass, but that seemed to be common here. In fact, the last time I mentioned it, everyone in the room looked at me like I was the strangest thing since Mightyena's sudden change of heart.

Electivire decided at that very moment to ask the massive fighters to battle elsewhere, and they did not hear him. He blasted away the two of them with a powerful bolt of lightning. Well, he blasted the one I did not recognize. Tyranitar may have been resistant to lightning, but the body of the other flew straight into the massive rock type, and both of them tumbled fifty meters away from the shop.

I dropped that. Those two goofballs have been brawling for a week straight now, training themselves for the tournament. After the shock of, well, everything passed by, I realized just how cliche the entire thing was. A international tournament, where just about everyone competes, this belonged in a freaking movie or TV show.

I gave an inward chuckle at the thought. Oh, it has been quite a while since I chuckled out loud. I figured it was not healthy to go weeks without finding humor in something. However, I experienced the humor silently. I kept my face free of emotion, devoid of humor, and professional.

Five minutes later, I remembered that I needed some oran berries from storage. The team wanted to train some more. By 'the team', I meant my team, Servine and her team, Mightyena and his team, Jake and Swampert. The group of friends I had, who refused to hold things against me despite all of the terrible decisions I made.

I still could not believe I could be forgiven by anyone, but I had to let that go as well. Maybe soon, I would be able to do so. Maybe I would realize eventually that pokemon were just that forgiving.

I needed to get a drink of water as well. Fortunately, there was a watering hole set up near Kangaskhan's storage place. It was an odd feeling that I was drinking from the same source that so many others drink from, with their mouths, but I had to conform to what pokemon did. Besides, our powerful systems seem to be able to handle most things.

After I spent a minute drinking water (I am still bad at drinking like a dog does, and using my tongue like that is difficult for me to get sufficient water), I visited Kangaskhan.

"What can I do for you, sweetie?" she asked sweetly. I allowed a smile to play on my lips. She calls me 'sweetie'. From anyone else, I would have demanded to be called by my name. At least sweetie was better than 'furball'.

"I need a refreshment on my supply of oran berries for when we train together tomorrow" I explained. She nodded at that. "Servine came and got hers today already. You wanted about fifteen, right?"

"We do intend to spend the entire day fighting" I answered as Kangaskhan moved back into her storage building to get me my oran berries. Good tasting things, oran berries.

I had plenty to learn about this world still, though if I had to ask anyone I would only ask my friends, the people I know. Servine, Mightyena, even Sarah I could trust to answer me, even though her crush has developed into an undying obsession with me.

I shuddered at the thought. Two days ago she actually tried to **kiss **me. I decked her of course, creating a crater in the dirt with her face, but it had been **entirely** too close. I scolded her of course, but she was basically insane at this point, at least in my eyes. The girl just could not be controlled, and she could not control herself.

Kangaskhan brought me the healing berries, and I thanked her. I think I was Kangaskhan's favorite customer at this point. I was always professional, and I spoke to her freely, despite her being four times taller than me and very scary looking. I have ever seen her fight, and she had told me that she would not be competing, but I suspect if anything happens to the things in her storage, she would put those massive fists to use.

My next stop was to try and speak with Jake today. I would then check on Mightyena and Servine. My group of friends right now had surpassed the number of real friends I have had in the human world, which stunned me. Regardless, me and Jake do not speak enough. maybe if I recount some **good **things about my world, **our **world, it will be easier for him to speak with me.

When I found the edge of sharpedo bluff, apparently named for the sharklike pokemon sharpedo. I had gotten to see one last wednesday. They were like a mix of a shark and a torpedo.

_Shar-pedo. Duh. _

Boy, were pokemon unoriginal with names. Then again, they don't know what a shark is, or what a torpedo is, which makes this one massive coincidence unless my theory about influence from my world to this one is correct. It had to be. So many coincidences are basically impossible. They have words they don't even know the meaning of.

It was clearly a one way process, however. Pokemon have never been a concept in our world. Ever. Several things here made no sense to me at all, and yet a few things, just a few, sparked memories.

_Ah. Here we are. _

Jake's home was in front of me, and downstairs. I had been there once before, when the two of them decided to oversleep. I think it was quite spacious, and rather cozy for pokemon standards. It's view was impressive, and the only thing that ruined the image was the teeth. I was assured it was natural, but I seriously have my doubts.

"Jake and Swampert!" I called as I entered, seeing the two in the room. Swampert was watching the water, maybe because he was a water type, and Jake was taking a nap in his straw bed. "Time to awaken, Jake" I told him, nearing the electric mouse "I must remind you to stock up for our training tomorrow. Why not get up now?"

After rubbing his eyes with his paws, he glanced up at me and became a little frightened. To his credit, he tried to hide it. "It's all right, Jake" I said calmly "There is no need to fear me".

He straightened up. "R-right. No need of course. What were you waking me up for?" he asked.

"He came to remind us to restock our supplies for our next day of training" Swampert replied for me. Jake nodded immediately at that. He was far more comfortable with the friend that has been around for what was essentially his entire life, at least that which he remembers. I, on the other hand, have scared him badly multiple times now.

"I would like to have a conversation with you at some point today as well" I said, ready to talk about something more cheerful. I needed to make this kid more comfortable around me, and so I had better find something happy to talk about.

I then walked away, realizing that he looked rather stunned and a little afraid. Maybe it was because I nearly killed him, and maybe it had something to do with my rather intimidating appearance. Having fangs had downsides too.

That job complete, I wandered back into town. Wandered was the correct word of course, due to the fact that I was still trying to get the whole town memorized so that I would not get lost. The problem was the town kept changing nowadays with the dirt buildings popping up out of nowhere for the pokemon competing in the tournament. Not to mention one of them moved once or twice a day when there were apparently complaints about the neighbors.

I was told that a pokemon technique led to these pure dirt houses showing up, and depending on how skilled the pokemon using the move was, the buildings were more detailed. Several were built by a pair I have not met yet, who made intensely detailed buildings with designs that had little equal. I have seen plenty human buildings less impressive than some of the ones built by whoever used earth power on the best building there was.

There were also buildings of wood and stone and a little metal, some looking somewhat nice, and some looking rather like patchwork. There were the buildings made by the fighting types, there were some that were apparently called timburr, and one that was larger, and held a metal beam apparently called a gurdurr. That gurdurr had been sparring with some other teams using two timburr as teammates, and seemed to be decent at swinging that metal girder around. However, screaming 'i am terror' while slamming his weapon into the ground is an interesting form of intimidation.

On the other hand, he was a fighting type and I needed to keep an eye on him if we had to fight together. Nearly every single person in this town was a contender to wind up fighting my team and i.

I wandered around, and veered towards the small cave where my friend Mightyena lives with his teammates. I was deeply impressed by the lighting, as it seemed like someone had somehow stabilized a water pulse and stuck it in the wall. Quite nice looking, and they provided enough light to see. Seeing in the dark is something that several dark types are known for, though my ability to do so is not on par with some of the others. I still can see with little light however, and of course my absol sense negates the need for seeing anyways.

I can count myself lucky that I managed to not only become an absol, with plenty of benefits to being what I am, and to also have gotten lucky that I was excellent at making a mental map of my surroundings with said sense. I could have instead been constantly alerted to natural disasters, which would have driven me mad, or having a basic danger sense, that would have been useful, but not the best. Being able to hear dying heartbeats, rare but terrible, that would have turned me into an emotional wreck.

If I was not an emotional wreck already.

"Caleb. That is your name, correct?" a deep voice questioned from behind me. I looked back to see another absol. It was like looking into a mirror for me. I know there are slightly different features in each pokemon, but I could not discern it. "Hello" I replied.

I turned around completely to face him properly. Actually, the boy or girl thing was difficult for me as well right now; I had no idea how to tell that either. I automatically thought he was male based off of his voice, and I had in fact been told that most female absol have slightly deep voices as well, almost deep as a male.

There was silence for ten seconds of absolute silence as we both analyzed each other. I noted how his eyes never glanced away, never flickered. He did not turn it into a staring contest, blinking freely when he needed to. His face was devoid of emotions, like he did his best to avoid showing emotion at all costs.

Basically, it was like looking in a mirror.

"My name is Caleb" I responded, watching him. Who was he? Why does he wish to speak with me?.

"I am Absol" he replied in the same tone. Of course his name was Absol. Unless they have a nickname, their name is their species. To me, the system is terrible. Imagining the human world like that, with seven billion people having the same name, it would be beyond confusing.

"What did you wish to speak with me about?" I asked. I had no time for a silent standoff. I had… Well, I actually had nothing to do. One thing I do not like, however, is people wasting my time.

"Of course, forgive me. I do not wish to waste your time" he said. This guy was seriously making me think I was actually talking to myself. Weirder things have happened than a future version of me pretending to be someone else to warn me of something.

As soon as I thought that, I immediately realized that I watch too much television. I don't even watch television too often. I never will again, I realized, unless pokemon make some serious technological advancements in my lifetime. Did I want that to happen?

"i was informed of the recent advancement of the team you had there" he said "i simply wished to know who you are. I am Absol of team Amber, and no, I am not it's leader. Amber is".

The team was named after the leader? I could imagine that it took plenty of that self importance feeling to name the team after yourself, or else a lack of creativity. "And who is this Amber?" I asked in response.

"Amber is the eevee on our team. The one with the necklace" he replied. I had not noticed a necklace, maybe I had been too focused on getting to bed. "I have never met an eevee" I said.

"The small brown quadruped" he explained. The tiny pokemon underneath the dragon like pokemon? The little fox like thing? I guess it must be powerful if it can be the team leader of the group.

"Very well. What did you want to know about me?" I asked. He seemed surprised that I was out of questions. To be honest, I simply had little left to learn about team Amber.

"I wanted to know how you managed to show up everyone around you with your abilities in the field. You have only been active about a month and a half, correct?" he asked.

"The major thing that brought us to the top was sheer luck and a little bit of power" I answered honestly. "We took down two pokemon who later turned out to be outlaws, and we had no idea whatsoever. Our next challenge after making our name known (i had nothing to do with people knowing our name, I assure you), was attempting to find treasure in a three team mission we somehow got picked for. We managed to bypass the ridiculous challenges in the special dungeon, and retrieve enough treasure to be considered rich by pokemon standards. At that point, we were well known. Afterwards, I made my journey to meet Palkia and deliver it's lustrous orb, and Palkia promised to help me return home. When I got the chance…"

I choked on the next words. I forced them out. "I failed. I failed because I like this place too much, and I failed because this place holds more appeal than my old home. It was selfish of me to do so, but I could not make myself go back. After that… Sarah, my teammate, had to save me from myself. I was not in good shape".

"That brings me to today" I said "there truly is little special about us at this point, Absol. Please, do not mistake me for someone who can handle anything I face. We may have done up to this point, but there is little to suggest that we are as excellent at fighting as we are made out to be".

Absol bowed his head slightly. "I would call that humility, but frankly, I believe you give yourself so little credit it borderlines on pessimism" he told me "I can sense the power in your body, far more than a normal absol's. I may be more proficient at sensing disasters, however I am trained to understand power when I see it".

I needed to learn how to do that. It could be useful. "But…" Absol said now "I caught a few things in your explanation. You mentioned 'pokemon standards'... As if you were unfamiliar with them. you mentioned returning home, and somehow needing Palkia to do so…"

This guy was a calculative as I was. It was intimidating, honestly. Was I prepared to speak of who I was to this person? Did I trust him? "What do you make of it?" I asked him.

"All I can figure is that you and Amber will be good friends" he said as he turned around and departed. One thing different between me and my new acquaintance, he was willing to be a vague bastard at the end. I mean, what the hell does that mean?

_Not apparently a double of me. Good. I do not need a double. Maybe not be so vague next time. That just might work for you. _

I don't like it when people are so vague. Just say what you need to, and move on. I did just that, move on. I had to get back to the guild anyways.

_I should talk to this Amber, however. It would be best to know who she is and why Absol wanted me to speak with her. _

She was the little fox like pokemon underneath her dragon friend. The one with the white collar of fluff. Rather something that a human would pick up and cuddle without hesitation. I had not seen her since she had appeared behind the dragon pokemon and peered at us shyly.

Whoever she was, she was either astonishingly powerful or else a capable leader. It would be worth speaking to her. Perhaps she could join our training sessions.

I had to get into Mightyena's home, which I did without difficulty. The reason I wondered if there would be difficulty is that Mightyena threatened to set a trap the next time someone tried to sneak around their home. Apparently some zigzagoon had tried at some point.

At any rate, I did not blow up on entry or get trapped into a cage. I went by unhindered. "Mightyena?" I asked into the cave.

"Behind you" he said, appearing in my absol sense in the most sudden and frightening way possible. I bristled, and then did my best to hide it. I turned my head to see behind me.

"Practicing faint attack again?" I asked. My friend nodded. Using faint attack improperly apparently allows me to sense them, despite them being invisible, but Mightyena was making an effort to hide from me. We have spent several hours just with me telling Mightyena whether I can sense him.

"You were completely hidden this time" I informed the wolf like pokemon. He grinned a grin full of fangs. "Good. I need to be able to handle at least that whenever I next fight an absol" he said.

An attempt to intimidate me, which probably would have been more effective if that had been his actual ability. He was practicing that as well, trying to drop people's guard. "The intimidation does not effect me just yet. You must work on that".

He nodded again, dropping the act and acting like he normally would. "Right then. What was it you wished to tell me?"

" simply wanted to remind you to restock on healing berries and other items for the training tomorrow. Also, I plan on inviting team Amber. It was their absol who recommended I meet that team" I told him.

He seemed surprised by that, and then he nodded. One thing I respected about Mightyena was his willingness to accept things without too much headache. As long as they made sense. Sometimes, he was pretty amusing as well, during select moments.

"I would not have forgotten to get supplies, but thanks for showing you care" he said, starting to walk out of the cave "Servine remembers too, so you really do not have to bother".

He was right of course. I was just being unnecessarily cautious. It was time for me to talk to Jake, the last thing I needed to. Servine would fare without me. I walked out of there, and watched Mightyena take a corner towards the storage place.

I decided to find Jake. It was imperative that I needed to handle this fear he had for me, and I needed to talk about something positive for once. Maybe this will help me. My question had been 'how had I recovered so quickly', and the answer was that I have not. I have not recovered, not truly, not yet.

I found Jake eventually, speaking with Kangaskhan as well as Mightyena. The two were getting several oran berries, just like I had. I sat near a rock and waited for them. I scratched the rock a bit with my tail because I had little ability to recall that I now **had **a tail, and I kept messing up when I tried to maneuver.

Jake was taking a while. I realized why when Kangaskhan brought about more than just oran berries. There was even an orange bandanna that flowed with electric energy. When Jake held it, his power grew even more intense. He put it away to my relief. I did not need him to nervously throwing off sparks that could blast me away by accident.

"Hello" I told him when he turned to walk towards me. His eyes widened a bit and he did throw off sparks, zapping a few passerby pokemon slightly who immediately turned to see the scenario. We were gathering a crowd immediately.

"What do you want?" he asked as calmly as possible. I forced a smile onto my face. "I just wish to have a chat with you. It is best that we do so without a crowd. Crowds stress me out somewhat" I told him.

"Oh, you meant now? You said 'later' earlier and… I thought that was what you meant" he said. I looked away. "Yes, I said later, but there is something I really must speak to you about. It is as urgent as anything we have dealt with before" I told him.

"Like…" he began, but I turned and began to lead the way. After a moment of hesitation, he followed me. The other pokemon seemed slightly more at ease that I was not trying to attack the raichu, but they had noted that I had declared it a matter of urgency, apparently a serious, secret one.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" he asked as we found a secluded area "not more horror stories?"

He was right to be worried. I had scared him plenty. "The opposite. I have been destroying myself inside remembering only the bad about my world, the same thought process that first led to me being here permanently, and the same thought that led to me trying to sleep forever. Now, I need to change".

He was stunned at my explanation, wondering just what I would talk to him about. I decided that he had a right to know. "I will now speak of every single **good **thing I have ever known in my world. Sit down, this may take a while. I need to remember good things about my world if I can even stay sane".

We were in a clearing, a distance from the town, and my senses never caught any observers. Jake did sit, against a boulder. I sat down opposite from him. "Allow me to begin".

I then spoke of every good thing that ever happened to me. It took the rest of the day to tell everything good about the world I was from, and the specific moments I know of that were good. Everything. With every word, my heart lifted more as I found myself actually recovering. I was actually starting to feel truly good. Maybe I would actually be happier after this. Maybe I could survive this. Even if I maintained a professional atmosphere, I would be happier, better.

Now, I have recovered. This is why I recovered so quickly, and when things get tough again, nothing shall hold me back. The world had better prepare, because one more human has made his home in this world.

One more human. Can the world take it?

One more human. Can pokemon handle it?

One more human. Me. I had survived this long, and i'll be darned if I don't make the most of it now. I was ready to make my life better for once, and now I could remember every good thing I have ever seen and known of my world. I would survive.

And now, with finality, I finished my story to Jake, who seemed far more comfortable around me already. He was grinning at the thought that there were good things to our world, and I knew that he would be much happier around me for the rest of the time I knew him.

And like that, I had everything. I had a life, I had friends, more than I ever had in my old world. I had everything I needed and wanted here. I was… Happy. That was the feeling. Finally, I was happy.

A new life. I think, perhaps that was just what I wanted. A life that brings happiness and a feeling of success. The pokemon world. I had wondered once what 'pokemon' meant, and I had thought it meant the creatures that live here, but what it **means **to be a pokemon…

To succeed and live life how you want to.

To be friendly and keep yourself in good spirits and others in good health, and be friends.

To be the person you are inside.

_Oh, I am becoming hopelessly philosophical. Nevertheless, I am correct. To survive here, I need to follow these rules. My new home… I can call it home now. _

And I would succeed. I would live how I want to. I would be as helpful as possible, and I would never ignore my friends. I would be who I was supposed to be, the person I was. It was the best I could do.

I was a changed person… Pokemon. I was a changed pokemon.

_Just wait. My life begins right now!_

* * *

**Hello, everyone. Boys and girls. Audience. Readers. Today, the last chapter of the first book of The Absolite Chronicles ends. My story is far from over, however. When the first chapter of that book comes around, i will add a authors notes in it's own chapter, right at the end. That will not come until the next book has actually come out. It should not be long, i just have to write the first chapter. **

**This chapter was indeed short compared to the last one, actually half as long. That was because i simply did not want to try and drag it on until it was so long it made no sense. This was an ending after all. It needed to actually resolve things. **

**The tournament comes! Book two, The Absolite Chronicles: Book Two: The Challenger comes! I know what i want to do with it mostly, and it will continue on constantly, just like this one did. I do hope that you find book two just as good as book one, because i intend to start off strong!**

**The future of the pokemon world shall be told, and i intend to tell it to you... But not right now... Let me write it first, okay?**

**That would be great... Oh, i am tired. I was up late doing this... *Yawn* I need to get some sleep now...**

**Good night everyone, i hope you enjoyed my story. Please review on your opinion of my story, please continue to send character bios to me via personal email (let's avoid spoilers to those who read reviews, please). When book two comes out, it would be great for you guys who enjoy this story and have followed or favorited this story to go and do so for the next story. Next time, everyone. Next time... **

**Good night- wait, i said that already, right? *Yawn***

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**Nickname:**

**Age:**

**Gender:**

**Species:**

**Personality:**

**Background (this may be lengthy):**

**Unique Aspect (optional):**

**Other:**


	33. Ending notes and announcements

**All right, everyone. It is time. At the time I write this, The Absolite Chronicles continues in book two: The Challenger. Reviews to either this new story or the first story will get a response in new chapters in book two. **

**To anyone reading this, go to my profile and find the second book under my list of stories if you wish to continue reading The Absolite Chronicles. If you follow the story like you have done the first, you can get updates of all the chapters. **

**There will soon be another story on that same page. My new story, called "New Age: World of Pokemon" will be starting as well. To those who enjoy the breakneck pace of my chapter uploading, I apologize, but I will be alternating between the two. **

**This new story will have something to do with the main series, more so the sequel series, but I do not plan to make any connections anytime soon. As far as it goes right now, this new story is completely different. **

**Please continue to enjoy my work for as long as you please, and have a grand time doing so. I implore you to review the chapters of The Absolite Chronicles book two, and I also wish for you to review my new one when it appears. "New Age" reviews will be answered in that story alone. **

**Thank you all for reading this story. I enjoyed writing it, and from reviews, I can think that you enjoyed reading it. **

**So when things kick off in the stories, I will be happy to continue writing. **

**With greatest wishes:**

**Hyperjade**


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